


Homeostasis

by AceofHarts



Series: Homeostasis [2]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/F, I don't actually know if it's mild it doesn't seem that bad to me, M/M, Mild Language, probably there are more relationships than that but the main focus is on Eremin, with Mikannie as sort of the secondary
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-16
Updated: 2014-05-10
Packaged: 2018-01-15 23:06:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 52,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1322626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AceofHarts/pseuds/AceofHarts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Twelfth grade is as good a time as any to be restless. Armin fully intends to get out of this grey concrete wasteland of a city with Eren and Mikasa, even if he has to drag them the whole way to university himself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Homeostasis: a means of maintaining equilibrium in a system. Variables are regulated so that internal conditions remain stable even as the system faces external alterations.

 

            It had started out as an innocent enough question. ‘Who’s going to cook next year?’ Eren had wondered. Armin had thought it was a logical line of inquiry. Dividing up tasks would be a useful buffer against typical roommate shenanigans—all the fighting over washing machines and dishes left in the sink, all the bickering and passive-aggressive, long-term games of tug-of-war over belongings and appliances and friends. Sharing an apartment with people as explosively emotional as Eren and as coldly intimidating as Mikasa must have merited planning even this far in advance. Twelfth grade had only just started—applications to universities hadn’t even begun—but if they set it all out now, firmly and methodically, maybe the three of them could survive four years of university in one cramped apartment.

            As he feverishly sliced up carrots he’d forgotten to peel for a stew he didn’t know how to make, Armin could not help but wonder whether he had credited Eren with too much forethought and too little deviousness. After ten minutes of back-and-forth with Mikasa about which of them was the worse cook, Armin had been pressganged into testing his abilities by an impromptu election which had resolved the argument with suspicious quickness. A hot meal was as plausible a motive as a roommate agreement. Carla and Grisha spent most of their time working in the nearest city, so Mikasa and Eren had to fend for themselves most days.

            _At least that means they’ve got some experience_ , he thought with a despairing glance at the rough chunks of potato sitting on the cutting board.

            “So are you coming to the game?” Eren asked, thumping his heels erratically on the front of the counter. He had his back curved forward and his palms resting on the counter’s edge, and seemed utterly oblivious that sitting on the counter might potentially be frustrating to the chef-in-training he’d just appointed.

            “When is it?”

            _Ugh_. Armin’s straw-blond hair was sticking to his forehead; he pushed as much of it behind his ear as would stay and felt his face grow a little redder. _Cutting vegetables should not be this strenuous._ It was less the physical exertion than his increasing awareness that he had no idea what he was doing. If he could avoid destroying his grandfather’s slowcooker in the process of making this meal, he would count it as a victory.

            “Tomorrow; it’s just after class.”

            “On the back campus?” Mikasa asked. Her general demeanour had placed her at the table and as far from the flailing attempt at cookery in progress as possible given the size of the room. The kitchen in Armin’s house—his grandfather’s house—was a cramped, cluttered affair, with mismatched chairs around a wobbly wooden table. Armin had never minded all that. At the right time of day, sunlight that made it past the tangle of potted greenery in the windowsill made the peeling yellow paint on the walls and the assorted blue and copper cookery glow.

A square of this well-timed sunlight flooded the table where Mikasa sat with her arms folded and her expression, as usual, unreadable.

            “It’s at the park.” Eren leaned over and nudged Armin’s shoulder with his own. “You’re coming, right? You can just go with us on the bus.”

            Armin chanced a quick look over his shoulder at Mikasa, whose gaze had flitted down and to the left. She was the lead scorer of their high school girls’ soccer team, and she had one of the most impressive records in recent memory. She rarely missed a shot, and she never missed a practice. This meant that her attendance of Eren’s soccer games was dismal and going to stay that way for the whole season. This year Eren had turned to Armin as informal cheerleader and provider of post-game analysis.

             The trouble was, Mikasa had done the same. She had never _asked_ Armin to attend her games, precisely, just as right now she was not _saying_ that she’d thought he was going to be on the sidelines while she won another game for them. What she was doing was freezing her expression solid and tucking her chin into the red softness of her scarf.

            _Class ends at 2:20. The game won’t start before 2:30 to take into account transportation. Giving the game two hours to finish, and maybe twenty minutes to get back to campus…_

“I’ll go, but I can’t stay afterwards,” Armin said.

            “Oh, right—Mikasa, your game’s at five, right? Sorry.” She shook her head.  

            “I’ll get there in time,” Armin said. He tossed the potatoes and carrots in the pot alongside the noodles, the canned broth, and the lumps of dough he hoped would turn into biscuits. The stew his parents had made for him as a kid had always had them.

            “Alright,” he said once he’d put the lid on, set the time, and set the crockpot to its work. “Who wants to go first?” When Eren wrinkled his nose and pretended not to have heard, Armin turned to the friendlier candidate. “We can start with Shakespeare, if you want. It might be better to get it out of the way early.”

            “Yes,” Mikasa said, and the three of them took their backpacks and moved out into the gold-flecked square of grass that was the back yard. Armin and Mikasa established their post with ease after years of practice—Mikasa sitting on the stoop with her notebook and pen, while Armin sat cross-legged before her with his own notes and a small fortress of books from which to reference and draw quiz questions.

            “Do you want to start with review, or questions right away?” Armin asked

            “Questions. I still remember class.”

            “Alright. On what source material did Shakespeare base _The Tempest_?”

            Mikasa blinked once, but her gaze at the closed cover of her notebook was steady and unclouded, and her hands didn’t even twitch as if to flip through to that day’s notes. 

            “It isn’t.”

            “Right. It’s one of the few. But what might it have been based on?”

            Mikasa had a way of making silence tangible—just the slightest drawing together of her eyebrows or lifting of her eyelids, the faintest compression of her mouth, could make meaning of soundless space. Her hesitation was hardly half a second, but that was enough given the faint frustration she showed.

            “There was a historical storm,” Armin said, “a few years before Shakespeare wrote the play. One of the ships in a fleet sailing to Virginia got separated from the fleet; it ended up all by itself out at Bermuda, but the crew survived…”

            While Armin tried to explain the finer points of a play he wasn’t wholly confident he understood (facts and figures were one thing, but figurative language was shaky ground), Eren contented himself with keeping a soccer ball above the ground with one foot. The constant thumping in the background wasn’t even a distraction after so many years, and it was at least an improvement over previous phases. Eren had spent the whole summer after first year trying to master heading the ball, which had made for more swearing and alarming crashing sounds.

            Once Eren joined Mikasa on the stoop for his own round of tutoring, however, cursing and general complaining became inevitable.

            “I’m never going to need to know this,” he said all of thirty seconds into his session. Mikasa remained next to him on the narrow rectangle of concrete with her arms folded on top of the soccer ball.

            “You need to know it for the test,” she said. He scowled at her.

            “She’s right,” Armin said. “Even if I get the Sina Scholarship and Mikasa gets accepted on the basis of her soccer record—”

            “I know that! I’ve got to have an average of—whatever—to get the entrance scholarship I need for us all to go.”

            “Eighty five,” Armin said. “If you get the scholarship they give for a ninety percent admission average, we might have to worry less about rent. I’ve been working it out, and I’m sure we can get you there now that you’ve dropped physics.”

            Eren, who excelled at English through some charismatic brute force in his essays, struggled with mathematics—which, regrettably, was one of his limited options for a university-level course. He needed six to even apply to a school. There was little chance of his pursuing a career in the sciences, as Armin intended to, and he would certainly have the marks required to get _into_ the general arts program; the trouble lay in funding. The trio was going to pool their resources. Armin and Mikasa had some chance of getting free rides for tuition, books, and at least first year housing, but there was just no way Eren could do the same. Eren’s and Mikasa’s minimum-wage burger-flipping jobs and Armin’s equally unimpressive salary as a cashier at the supermarket might not be enough to cover them.

            “I’ll do it,” Eren said, turning his eyes to his equations again. Five seconds later the characteristic frown reappeared, and he said, “Fuck, though—I mean, the college here’ll give me an alright scholarship at eighty percent. Why don’t you two just go on?”

            “Then I’m staying too.”

            “ _Mikasa_ —”

            “No,” Armin said, and that was all. They’d had this argument too many times already. They lived in one of the worst neighbourhoods in one of the worst towns in the province. The police were corrupt and violent, the infrastructure was dilapidated, the aid offices were badly staffed, and none of the municipal politicians gave a single damn about any of it. Armin was going to get a degree in geology or natural sciences; he was going to go to a good school, get a respected degree, earn a well-paid position, and not spend the rest of his life in this sinkhole.

            But he wasn’t going to leave these two here—not Eren, who’d turned his scowl on the squiggles and shapes on the page as if he could decipher this language if he just wrinkled his forehead enough, who would work at that question for hours if he had to simply because that was what he knew he needed to do. Not Mikasa, who would stand by Eren in this grey concrete cube of a town even though she had a certain means of escape for herself alone. They deserved better than that—better than choking down exhaust fumes and garbage reek and the more toxic sneers and condescension of the people from the ‘better half.’ Eren was the sort of person with the drive and the charisma and the sheer orange-sparking passion to demand that the town change for them, and to insist that he’d do it himself if it wouldn’t. It was save everyone or spend his life trying.

            _Waste it, more like_. Armin hugged his knees and rested his chin on top of them. He let his eyes shut for now; he still had the equation before his mind’s eye, and would be ready to help if Eren had any questions.

            He wasn’t going to let this place eat the people he cared about. He couldn’t do it. Maybe he was less ambitious than Eren; maybe it was selfish of him to take his friends and run. But he wasn’t the one who was going to make this place better. Not directly. The best he could do for it was take Eren and Mikasa someplace the air was clearer, someplace they could get their bearings before they plunged back into this. Besides, if Eren went and got his foothold in political science (an inevitable outcome, Armin thought, if he was given the resources), then he could come back to this place and dismantle all its hideousness by the sort of means the richer population couldn’t write off or disdain.

            _He’ll do it. Mikasa and I will get him there. We have to all stay together, so that he can make this place better._ Armin smiled faintly into the fabric of his jeans. _I’m starting to sound like him…_


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Armin goes to one of Eren's games, but it isn't at all the same when he's just watching from the bleachers.

            It was cold for September. The sunlight could barely dribble through the clouds; the whole city was as grey and hospitable as a damp cinderblock. Even the green of the soccer pitch had a blunted brownness about it. Armin folded his arms and wondered whose idea it had been to make the bleachers out of metal. The players were only just taking their starting positions and he was already shivering.

 _At least I’m not running around in shorts and a jersey_. Once after a ninth grade game Eren had pointed out that the strip of his knees visible between his shorts and his woolly soccer socks was purple. Armin squinted but didn’t see any festively-coloured patches decorating his team's arms or knees. The worst of it was their jerseys, a muddy shade of brown which Jean had of course termed more bluntly. Armin genuinely had no idea how a high school ended up with that particular shade of horrible when most of the others had blue, green, purple and so on—their opposition today, another local school from a similar region of the city, had managed to get a claim on red. But so it was. 

            They deserved better than that. His school’s soccer teams were two of the few positive social spaces in the city, as far as Armin could tell. He’d spent elementary school being routinely punched and spat on, and early ninth grade being shoved and tripped and laughed at for no better reason than that he was smaller than some of the others, and the worst he’d fight back with was words. Eren and Mikasa had prevented this where they could, but of course they couldn't be with him all the time. But simply by going to tryouts that first September he’d expanded his social circle to comprise both the boys’ and the girls’ teams. Not everyone necessarily got along with one another or even talked all that much, but they were unarguably a unit. Now any classroom which held Reiner or Sasha or Bertl or Mikasa—which held _any_ of them—was safe ground. Eventually the sneers and the physical violence had eased off anyway, whether because Armin had simply risen to more senior grades or because of this social change itself—but either way, classes and lunch hours spent with his teammates still had this strange sense of ease. Even simply the silence between him and Annie was enough to make any place a few degrees more hospitable.

            “Still going for a perfect attendance record, Armin? I don’t know if it counts for other people’s extracurricular activities.”

            Armin turned to look at the row of bleachers behind him and found a familiar freckled, softly rectangular face smiling mildly at him.

            “It’s not like you miss many of them,” Armin said.

            “I miss enough that it’s not formally assumed that I’ll be here. You're here on time more often than the referees are.” Marco held out one of the two tall paper cups he was holding. Sighing a little even as he smiled, Armin crawled back to join him in the second row; the bleachers were scattered with parents, siblings, friends of players, but none in very great numbers. Armin sat on the side unoccupied by Marco’s crutches; he held his right leg, in its bulky cast, out in front of him.

            “Thanks,” Armin said as he took the proffered cup, which was too thin to keep the coffee from scalding his hands. It was a welcome kind of burning; it at least confirmed he still had sensation in his fingers. “Is your leg doing any better?”

            As the referee blew her whistle to start the game, Marco shook his head.

            “Maybe in time for the spring season.” Before his brief but memorable introduction to the bumper of a fast-moving car, Marco had been part of the miserable right half of their school’s team. He’d had the unenviable task of having to defend against any attackers who stole the ball from Eren and made it past Jean on midfield while he cursed at his corresponding forward. From a diplomatic perspective Armin had always thought that Marco would have served better as the midfield, so that he could stay between the other two—but he could not imagine either Jean or Eren playing defence when they both lingered so far towards the opposing team’s goal. “What about you? I think Reiner misses you on defence. Daz just…doesn’t have the nerve for it.”

            Armin laughed a little. In ninth grade Eren had asked him so doggedly that Armin had eventually, resignedly joined the team. After seeing how ill-disposed Armin was for midfield (he lacked the stamina), goalie (he lacked the quickness and the size), and forward (he lacked the aggressive instinct), the then-captain had stationed him on defence for lack of a better place. This was before Reiner’s reign as captain; once he rose to power he made sure that the defence players were utilized to their greatest capacity. The old captain hadn’t respected the position at all. Under Reiner’s leadership, Armin had found his place as centre defence, coordinating Reiner on the left and Marco on the right and pressuring the other teams’ forwards more through his strategic presence than his actual skill.

            This most recent September, though, Armin had let registration pass without attending tryouts. Reiner had arrived at his locker the next morning with questions and the assurance that, since he’d been on the team all three years previously, he didn’t need to worry about tryouts. Armin had declined. This was his final year of high school, and he needed to worry about not only his own grades, but also Eren’s and Mikasa’s, if they were all to attend the same university. Between homework, studying, tutoring, and all the extra shifts he’d been picking up at work, Armin had not expected he’d have the energy. He needed to put everything he had into next year.

            “I never had a good kick.”

            Marco shrugged.

            “Mine wasn't fantastic either; but we were still there when we needed to be, I think. You especially. You held the centre together—you always knew which way they’d go. Daz…” Both boys looked at the field just in time to see the much-aggrieved centre defenceman let one of the opposing team’s forwards through with all but a flinch and a wail. Reiner, who covered the left so that he could put his considerable intimidating bulk between the enemy’s right wing and his own team’s goal, managed to plough the ball away from the attacker before Bertl had to make a move away from his goal posts. Reiner pushed the play through to his own forwards with one solid kick. “I think he doesn’t have the strategic mind for the position,” Marco said, kindly. “In the spring you should join again.”

            “In the spring I’m going to be worrying about finals.”

            “You’ll be fine.”

            “I mean _Eren’s_ finals.” Marco laughed. “Aren’t you worried at all?” A shrug this time. Marco’s gaze went out to the field, where the two teams’ forwards were skirmishing.

            “My grades are alright.”

            “What about Jean’s?”

            There had been no formal announcement that the two were going to attend the same school, but it seemed like such an obvious supposition, like saying that summer followed spring.

            “Better than mine, actually. Not that he knows what he’s doing… I mean what he’s doing next year,” Marco added hastily when Armin could not suppress a laugh. “Do you think we’ll win?”

            “The girls’ team is stronger,” Armin said, because it felt more benevolent than an outright negative. They watched in silence for a few moments. Reiner and Bertl were really the most reliable part of the whole team. Eren, Connie, and Jean, the other reigning seniors, were all exceptional players as well, but the front half of the field remained volatile.  

            “Oh, there he goes…”, Marco said as Jean stole the ball from the other team’s midfields.

            “The wrong way…” The ball was promptly swiped out from under his feet, and Jean went sprawling. Marco winced.

            “You see? We need you out here.”

            “I never talked to the midfields anyway.”

            “Yes you did.” Armin looked at him sideways; Marco raised his hands peaceably, but his smile was too innocent. Since he clearly was going to have to wait for whatever doom Marco had planned for him, Armin turned his attention back to the game just in time to see Eren sail gracefully through the air and then land face first in the mud. Eren was up on his feet and tearing down the field after the perpetrator before Armin even had time to wince. It really was amazing how rough this sport could get at the high school level with no penalties called. Jean’s celebrated tactic of putting his foot down and bringing the ball to a complete stop while the opposing forward went sprawling, and Reiner’s preferred method of simple letting the opposite team bounce off of him and land hard on the ground, were reasonably tame by the average measure.

            With Jean’s help Eren was successful in regaining possession. He sprinted up the field—speed bolstered by anger—but he was going exactly the wrong way—

            “This goalie’s weak on his right side,” Armin mumbled, frowning as Eren continued up the right flank as if he could transpose Eren to the proper side telekinetically. Connie and the centre forward were both covered too thoroughly to be passed to; Eren had to make the chance himself.

            “Tell him,” Marco said.

            “No.”

            “Tell him—”

            “Marco—”

            “He’s going to miss!”

            Armin didn’t see how he had a choice. He sprang to his feet.

            “ _HIGH LEFT, EREN!_ ” Not two seconds later, the ball hit the net at the top left corner of the goal. As Armin sat down again he could not help but notice that Marco’s expression seemed to say, ‘See?’

            He also couldn’t help but see the coach’s head swivel in his direction. Even from this distance Armin could make out the flatness of that stare. Levi had not approached him after he’d dropped out of the team, and Armin suspected that he honestly didn’t care, but his expression was always so inscrutable that Armin was leery of him anyway. Eren was one of the most recklessly brave people Armin had ever met, he had been the one to convince Levi to coach the team in the first place, and even _he_ found himself pressured to impress him.

            And yet, as the game went on and play after play unwound—as more of the boys lost their footing in the increasingly churned-up earth, as too many scoring opportunities bounced off crossbars or goalie gloves or swearing faces—Levi did not raise his voice or tense his posture. He just watched, half-lidded and more unreadable than Mikasa. He’d toss a comment at them after the game, maybe, when he met with the school’s other head coach—but Armin had never yet seen him get truly upset or frustrated about any loss, no matter how catastrophic. The pressure the team felt had more to do with respect than with dread. 

            Today’s game wouldn’t have given even a short-tempered coach much cause to yell. Connie scored a goal by bouncing a pass off the post and then (to his own surprise) bashing it straight into the net with his forehead. Combined with Reiner’s and Bertl’s defensive efforts, it made for a two-one win.

            Connie was just shouting and leaping into a begrudging Jean’s arms when Marco nudged Armin’s shoulder.

            “That’s partially yours, isn’t it?”

            “I think we can safely give it to them, really… Besides, even if I wanted credit, you’d get some too.” He got to his feet and stretched. His muscles were taut, both from shivering and from condensing himself into a small knot of tension anytime play had gotten perilously close to either net. “Thanks for the coffee, Marco.”

            “You’re going?”

            “I have to get to the girls’ game.”

            “Jean can drive you over—we’re going that way anyway.” Armin looked out at the field again. Victories were rare; the carousing would continue for some time. More than once after a winning game, especially if the girls’ team had been with them, Connie had convinced the bus driver to take them all by some burger place or another. Those scenes remained luminous in Armin’s memory, all bright red plastic and milkshakes and muddy jerseys and too many people crammed into the booths before bright plate glass windows.

 _I’m too young to be thinking like that_ , he thought with a quick shake of his head and a glance out at the dull slate of the skyline.

            “I think they’ll be a while,” he said.

            “It looks like it’s going to rain…” Armin hefted his umbrella, which had been resting against the bleacher where he’d initially seated himself. “Ah—you’re ready for everything. I should've known.”

            “Tell them they did well, though, for me.” Marco nodded. “And Eren—tell him it’s not his kick at all. His accuracy’s fine. It’s his stamina.”

            “Alright. Cheer the girls on for us.”

            Armin hopped down off of the bleachers and made for the gap in the park’s fence. He dropped the coffee cup into a recycling bin (he couldn’t save the world like Eren could, but he thought the little things counted. Maybe. In the long run) and started back for the school. As he cleared the fence and glanced back between the links at the field, there was a slight twinge in his chest which he elected to ignore. There wasn’t time, and he’d never been all that good for the team anyway. He trailed his hand for a moment against the cold metal and offered a smile for friends who had no hope of seeing it. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I planned to just add this chapter and the next together into one , but school's gotten unexpectedly hectic again so I thought I should post something in the interim. Next one'll be up as soon as I can get it written!


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An excess of mud, a deficit of Mikasa, some shenanigans at Armin's house, and in general a whole lot of dweeby teenagers sidling around the issues at hand.

            There was nobody for Armin to sit with at the girls’ game, since all the ones he was close with were on the team. There _were_ , however, legions of parents, schoolfellows, and friends taking up virtually every free space on the school’s sagging bleachers. After much shuffling (sometimes more like dancing, very slowly, all high knees and flung out arms) and apologizing, Armin found his place. It was the corner of the top row of one set, at a place where the protective bar around the back was rusted and jagged enough to have frightened most of the spectators off.

            The game was just getting started by the time he managed to take up his post. Mikasa must have won the coin toss, because she was already pelting down the field with the ball, trailing hapless defencemen in her wake. No shout from the bleachers was necessary here; goalie twitched left, Mikasa kicked right. It was in the goalie’s best interests anyway. Getting in the flight path might not have stopped the goal, and it certainly would have hurt.

            The crowd, populated mainly with supporters of the home team, erupted with cheers, but the combined spectators were not enough to overpower the shriek which erupted from the nearest bench. Armin looked over at about the moment Coach Hange was at the height of their trajectory, and their arms were flung skyward. They and Levi shared responsibility for coaching both the boys’ and the girls’ teams, and when games were simultaneous, they split up. Neither of them were part of the school’s actual staff; they both worked at the nearest city’s university, but by happy circumstance lived in town and therefore could fit coaching some broke high school’s team into their schedules.

            “Amaaaaaaazing!!”, Hange said, their feet on the ground now but their hands still held up over their head. Their enthusiasm about this team never seemed to wane.

 _I guess it’d be difficult to lose interest_ , Armin thought. The boys’ team was good, but the girls’ was phenomenal. They dominated the local league every year, in large part due to the five girls now serving out their last season. With Mikasa and fellow scorer Sasha on the right and left wings and the indomitable Annie as powerhouse centre forward, they were virtually unstoppable as an offensive force. Ymir and Historia had reached a borderline symbiotic level of teamwork and made the defensive line anything but an appealing target for the other team’s forwards. Armin had played against them before in practice matches, so he could relate to the poor afflicted defence on the other team.

            Six goals and nearly two hours later, the two teams were lining up to shake hands and Armin was picking his way down to the sidelines armed with his opened umbrella. The downpour that had started with the second half hadn’t done anything to help Mikasa’s opponents turn the tide; they only had one goal to their name. If Mikasa and the others had a problem, it was that their two star forwards did not coordinate especially well. It wasn’t as bad as Eren and Jean—Mikasa and Annie didn’t overtly _fight_ —but they were competitive and individualistic and, all told, not a unified attack force.

            Once Hange was finishing whatever post-game remarks they had for the team—Armin heard something about ‘FANTASTIC’ and ‘WE’LL CRUSH OUR NEXT OPPONENTS’ echo across the brownish mire the field had become—Mikasa crossed to meet Armin. Her hair was plastered to her head with rain, and the scarf she was just wrapping firmly about her neck must have weighed twice as much as usual, but he held the umbrella over her anyway.

            “That was more amazing than normal,” Armin said. “Do you want to go straight home?” Mikasa shook her head.

            “I’ll get changed.”

            A spare metal fence, effectively just a long metal tube at about waist height, separated the field from the pavement just behind the school building. Armin and Mikasa made for a gap in this while many of the other players left the field at the opposite end. One exception met Armin and Mikasa just as they were passing through the gap in the fence. Annie and Mikasa did not exchange a greeting. They just fell into step beside one another. The other people leaving the field were bouncing conversations back and forth about the game, or the rain, or what was for dinner. Mikasa and Annie just marched grimly onward, shoulders squared and jaws clenched. They’d hardly met on the field that particular game, and the one time they’d gone for the ball at the same moment, tangled ankles, and wound up mudbound. Armin frankly did not want to be the poor rube who interrupted whatever silent dialogue was taking place, so he focused on his task as resident umbrella-wielder with great conviction.

            The distance to the school was mercifully short.

            “I need to go to my locker,” Annie said as they passed the very first entryway. Once she’d disappeared into the school building, Mikasa readjusted her scarf and said, “What should I change?”

            “I didn’t see any major errors,” Armin said. “If anything I’d just recommend that you work more with Annie and Sasha. I know you’re all great on your own, but if you could coordinate like Ymir and Historia, you’d be harder to corner, and you wouldn’t have to be so reckless.”

            Mikasa nodded.

            “I’ll do it.” He didn’t doubt her. Any sense of team pride aside, Mikasa’s athletic performance was just as important as Armin’s academic one if the three of them were going to stay together. Though Eren wavered sometimes into the realm of ‘Why is it so important, anyway? We should each just do what we have to, separately,’ Mikasa was firmly aligned with Armin. Eren didn’t have a luminous academic intellect, but he had the passion and the willpower and the charisma to make change where he wanted it made. It had started with punching schoolyard bullies, evolved into rage against the general state of the city, and might well keep on growing in rancour and heat. Eren Jaeger would be very easily interpreted as a force, scooped up and harnessed by some organization or another—but he wasn’t a force. He was a seventeen year old boy who put his outrage first, his wellbeing last, and his reasoning abilities somewhere in the middle. It would be too easy for him to be recruited by a group who misused him or misled him or otherwise betrayed him so that all that fire and all that intention to help went into either the wrong cause or no cause at all. Armin and Mikasa had to keep an eye on him or, given the way this place worked, he’d get burnt entirely out. Armin didn’t want to live in a world that successfully dimmed a pair of eyes that bright.

            “How was your game?” Mikasa asked.

            “They won. Eren and Connie each scored once.” They’d reached the door nearest Mikasa’s locker; she paused before she stepped inside.

            “Armin… Are you going to join again in spring semester?” He shook his head. “Eren misses you. And…I miss watching you. It’s less just…kicking the ball, when you’re out there with them.”

            “Sorry,” Armin said, but it was the best he could offer. His shoulders sloped downward a little more each time someone asked him.

            Mikasa didn’t press any further. She went to change into dryer clothes, and just as Armin was considering stepping inside to save his own self from getting drenched—

            “Hey, Armin!” Eren was splashing up the roadway, grinning through the greyness and looking like a proud five year old. He was still in full gear and was spinning a soccer ball in his hands. “You saw me score, right? Wait, obviously you did—thanks for pointing me to it.”

            “I thought you must have gone home,” Armin said. He lifted the umbrella so that Eren didn’t have to duck to fit beneath it. “If you were here you could have sat with me.”

            “I didn’t want Mikasa to see me.”

            _Oh no…_ Another sigh. He hoped he was reading too much into it, and that in the near future he wouldn’t have to pull his best friend gently aside and explain that _Eren, I’m sorry, I think she's cultivating some tension with Annie_ …

            “She’s getting so good it’s kind of scary,” Eren said. “When do you think we’ll have another practice game?”

            “You’d really be better off asking someone actually on the team.”

            “I need to see if I’ve got a chance at all. I mean I know it’s different since we’re both forwards, but sometimes we still bump into each other—if I can just get the ball away from her once, that’s progress. That’s something to build on. We’re going to the tournament this spring. We’ve won all our games so far—we’ll make it.”

            “You’ve definitely got a chance, especially with Marco back in the spring. That’ll even out the right flank.” Eren tipped back and onto the metal bar of the fence. It was less awkward to do the same than to try to stand in front of him in an attempt to keep him beneath the umbrella’s shelter. There was of course exactly zero point to keeping him covered anyway, just as there had been with Mikasa and Annie; but it was the principle of the thing.

            Their shoulders bumped as Armin sat, and Eren really looked at him for the first time.

            “You’re wearing this again.” He pinched the blue collar of Armin’s sweater. “I thought you tossed it after donkeyface proved he was a jackass all the way through.”

            Armin either sighed or gave a half-hearted laugh; even he wasn’t sure.

            “He doesn’t have a donkey face. I thought you called him horseface, anyway. You might as well at least be consistent.”

            “If he tells my best friend—who everyone knows has a crush on him—that he dresses like an old man, I’m going to insult him every way I know how. Forever. Fuck that guy.”

            “I’m okay, thanks.” Eren laughed. “I don’t think he was deliberately being awful, anyway. He just says things…”

            “So being awful by instinct is supposed to be better? If you’re not going to crush _often_ , at least try to crush _well_ , Armin.”

            “So when you go applying to schools, it’ll be for a Bachelor's in Crushing Technique?”

            “It’ll be a doctorate! I do really well.” He nudged Armin with his elbow. “So be careful. You’ve got the best brain in the city; make sure you use it.”

            Armin supposed he couldn’t argue that he was particularly good at this whole buiness. Jean whose relationship with Marco was inevitable, Annie whose interests seemed to be carrying her to Mikasa… Two crushes in sixteen years—almost seventeen now—and both doomed to failure. He’d been fortunate enough to keep any inclination towards Annie both minimal and private, but in ninth grade someone had pointed out to Jean how much Armin blushed around him, and Jean had taken it upon himself to try to let him down easy. Armin’s cheeks got hot even now just thinking about it. It wasn't as if he had been working up to a confession. 

            Then there was the obvious issue, or rather, the thing everyone thought was both obvious and a potential issue. Jean had brought it up when, well-meaning, he’d tried to direct Armin’s attention elsewhere. “What about Jaeger? You're pretty much dating him anyway, right? I don't think he'd say no if you asked.” But the basic feeling there was an entirely different shade, not at all the humiliating reddish-pink of a crush. In Armin’s experience, that entailed a lot of fumbled syllables and dropped objects and misplaced feet. But Eren had been in his life as long as he could remember—even longer than Mikasa had—and there had never been a chance for Armin to be surprised by how he felt about him, let alone grow embarrassed about it. It was a steady warm push from the centre of his chest, different from how he felt for Mikasa more in type than amount, and leagues less painful than what he’d felt for Jean or Annie.

            He hadn’t mentioned it, of course, and there didn’t seem to be any need to. There was too much to worry about already. The most important thing was getting himself, Eren, and Mikasa through university; after that, once they were all sorted and settled, maybe he’d have time to wonder about this.

            “Are you going to try again today?” Eren asked from about five perceptional kilometres away. 

            Armin blinked. He’d been chewing on his thumbnail and staring at the brickwork.

            “Hm? What?”

            “Cooking.” There went the distance and any lingering thoughts about romantic entanglements. Armin scowled at him.

            “I think you owe _me_ a meal after that, honestly.”

            “It wasn’t that bad. I kind of liked it.” That earned him a squint. “Really! The texture could use some work, but it didn’t _taste_ bad.”

            “Consistency’s a major concern, here, though. It took me so long to clean that pot…I don’t know how it wound up so slippery.”

            “Is your grandpa going to be home tonight?”

            Armin shook his head. In lieu of his parents’ incomes, his grandfather had started work again. Through good luck and some social connections he’d managed to get a job at the local college's library. Since it was open twenty four hours a day, every day, Armin frequently found himself home alone at odd hours. Eren and Mikasa had been a sort of security brigade for the first while, until Armin’s grandfather had been more comfortable leaving him home alone. It had been less a fear of criminals or safety hazards than a discomfort with leaving such a young child with so many bare walls and silent spaces.  

            “Then on the way back we’ll pick up a pizza, and we’ll find a movie to watch. Problem solved.”

            “How so?”

            “I’ll pay for it!”

            “If this is how you solve problems, all three of us are going to die of malnutrition next year.”

            “We’ll be fine. You’re brilliant; you’ll work it out eventually. It’s just like chemistry, right?”

            “Baking, maybe, to some extent…there are a lot of other considerations, though. I think you have to feel it when it comes to cooking.” That was experience talking, years of watching

            “You feel,” Eren said.

            “I can’t get that worked up about potatoes,” Armin said, looking away lest Eren’s eyes set their usual persuasive intensity to work on him. If he gave in now he was going to struggle through cooking every meal for the lot of them for four years. “If anyone here can do it it’s you.”

            “…I’ll just get pizza.” Eren tipped his head back and placed the soccer ball on his forehead, which required that Armin hold the umbrella higher. As he gradually removed the support of his hands Eren said, “Levi told me I should work on my balance, since I can’t keep possession if I’m on my face.”

            “That sounds reasonable. I don’t know if this is what he meant, though.”

            “Sure it is. Any and all balance should help, right? I—” It rolled; he managed to catch it before it fell too far. “You try.”

            “No, that’s ridiculous—”

            “It isn’t! Come here—”

            “Eren—”

            “Just try!”

            Laughing a little, Armin tilted his head back the same way Eren had. Eren set the soccer ball on Armin’s forehead, just above the bridge of his nose, and slowly pulled his hands away.

            “This is silly,” Armin said after letting about three seconds pass.

            “You’re going a little wobbly there. I think it’s going to f—”

            The fall was something Armin heard more than felt. It was just a squawk and then a slap, quickly subsumed by the more pleasant pattering of rain on plastic. He’d never really given a good thorough look at the underside of the umbrella before. It seemed like ages since he’d realized it was yellow, but now that it was hanging up there like the sun it was really quite clear to him.

            Going over backward had been an advantage in terms of more than just the view. It meant he’d been met with the field rather than ramming his nose against the asphalt. He’d managed to keep one leg hooked over the bar; most of the rest of him was in the greyish mess.

            “A-Armin—are you—”

            “Alright,” Armin said, propping himself up on his elbows. Cold mud was sliding down beneath his collar.

            “You squeaked like—like—oh fuck, I’m glad you’re not hurt because that was so funny.” Eren wiped his eyes with his right hand; his left was holding the umbrella, which he realized with a start once his eyes were clear. “And what the hell am I doing with this?”

            “You prioritized, I think.”

            “Argh, I’m sorry, I was going for your hand—you need help?”

            “I’m okay.” Armin pulled himself up and sat again on the fence. He reclaimed his umbrella, and Eren immediately set about running his fingers through Armin’s hair as if he could smooth the mud out of it. Armin resisted the urge to shut his eyes. If he got as comfortable as the hands in his hair were inclined to make him, he was going to wind up in the mud again. “The pitch is actually really soft. Must’ve been difficult to play on.”

            “It wasn’t so bad for us.” Eren looked at Armin’s back, which was shiny with the field’s colourless muck. “Wow, you’re soaked.”

            “So is everyone. It’s my contribution to today’s games.”

            “Well you’re still part of the team, so I guess it makes sense.”

            By happy circumstance, the school door burst open before Armin had to reiterate where he was placing his focus this year. Eren straightened up.

            “Mikasa, we’re going to—”

            “I’m going home,” Mikasa said without stopping. She was still wearing her uniform.

            “You don’t want to—?”

            “I’ll tell Carla you’re going to Armin’s.” She planted one hand on the fence and vaulted over it with ease. She was escaping across the field, but not quickly enough that Armin didn’t see it. She was blushing bright enough to burn through the bleak rainy haze; burying her chin in her scarf only brought out the scarlet all the more.

            “Is she mad?” Eren asked. Annie, meanwhile, slipped out the same entrance she’d used earlier and walked briskly away, perpendicular to Mikasa’s route.

            “I…let’s just get going,” Armin said. “I want to have a shower.”

            “Alright. You go back first, and I’ll pick up the pizza and a movie; I’ll be there soon.”

 

             Armin was just getting the first of the mud out of his hair when the bathroom door opened. Armin knew very well that there was no way the temperature had just dropped so many degrees, but he would have sworn he was breathing ice crystals rather than steam.

            “Hey—”, said a very familiar voice. Armin slammed a palm against the shower wall, pinning the curtain in place not because he suspected Eren would move it, but in case there had been any sliver of a gap.

            “Eren, are you serious?!”

            “I’m just grabbing your sweater! It’s my fault you fell, right? So I should wash it.” Armin sighed and covered his face with his free hand. “Oh. It soaked through your shirt, too. And it’s on your jeans. Alright—I’ll just wash all of it.”

            The door clicked shut before Armin could yell after him, “Eren, have you ever done the laundry in your life?!” He didn’t move from his present position, which was just as well. Shortly thereafter the door opened again.

            “Okay, more clothes!” Once he’d gone again Armin released his stranglehold on the curtain and peeked out beyond the edge. A small pile of folded clothes was placed on the sink counter.  

            Armin wasn’t sure how to feel about the fact that Eren must have just discovered the contents of his dresser, presumably including underwear drawer.

            By the time Armin recovered a complexion that wasn’t violently crimson and emerged into the living room (wearing what he had to admit was a favourite t-shirt and pair of jeans), Eren had changed into whatever clothes he’d kept in his backpack. Several years earlier a scalded and highly unimpressed Armin had manifested the lesson that the piping in the house was too old for water to be run elsewhere while someone was in the shower, so Eren hadn’t cleaned the mud off his face yet. Probably it didn’t bother him anyway.

            “I heard you were out about a minute ago, so I started the washer,” he said. “It’s okay that I put mine in with yours, right?”

            “…I guess we’ll find out. Usually whites are separate, but we’ll call it an experiment.” Armin let himself drop onto the threadbare couch next to Eren and couldn’t help but notice the lack of a large, near-flat cardboard box in its usual position on the floor before the couch. “Was the pizza place closed?”

            “I ordered one,” Eren said. “It should be here soon. They didn’t have any good ones handy, and I didn’t want to sit around there for so long.” Armin picked up the transparent DVD case set between his knee and Eren’s. Renting was difficult now that most of the chains had gone under, and Armin didn’t feel he could sacrifice his pay to an online service, so they were stuck with whatever the local convenience store could provide. Today’s find had a garish, unnecessarily spiky yellow font.

            “ _Crasherz_ ,” Armin said, a bit gingerly. Eren gave him another grin.

            “I thought you’d like it.”

            Eren’s development of a taste for mindless adrenaline-fuelled action movies had been a test of their friendship when they’d been about twelve years old, or Armin had expected it to be. That expectation had been firmly laid to rest when Eren had asked him to speak up a bit while Armin grumbled under his breath about the cardboard acting and how implausible all this was. Sitting through hours of car wrecks and strewn bullets and—most destructive of all—stilted dialogue had become enjoyable once Eren had started snickering along to Armin’s commentary as much as to the nonsensical one-liners.

            Someone knocked at the door.

            “Pizza probably—I’ll get it—”

            Eren raced to the door; he returned holding an open box of pizza, with half a piece already jammed into his mouth and the rest sticking absurdly out of it. He presented the box to Armin as if it were a treasure chest or jewellery case for his perusal. Armin hauled a piece out, Eren put the box in its usual station before the couch, and then he took the movie case from Armin and looked it over while he chewed.

            “Are we going over chem after?” Eren asked around a mouthful of cheese and tomato-drenched dough, once he’d worked through the greater part of the slice.

            “It’s that, or we could look at schools and start getting your applications ready. There’re a lot of options when it comes to scholarships and bursaries, so we’ll have to be thorough…”

            “We’ll do both.”

            “Are you sure?” Eren downed the last of the pizza and nodded.

            “This’s what we’ve got to do, right? I can’t remember science stuff unless you’re the one teaching it, and I need to start looking at…scholarships, and schools, and everything if I’m going to pull my weight next year. So, both. But the movie first, especially since I dumped you directly in the mud today. Besides, Mikasa’s in a weird mood, so it’s not like I’m missing out on some great bonding experience at home.”

            He turned his attention to the dusty old DVD player (so old it played VHS tapes as well), but he remained stationed there on the carpet in front of it longer than normal.

            “It’s not working,” Eren said.

            “You have to hit the one button—”

            “No, I know, but it won’t even turn on.”

            “Let me try.”

            With both of them crouched in front of the beast, it became undeniable. The tiny green lights weren’t even flashing to indicate the player had power. Once Armin confirmed that it was plugged in and checked the manual, and after a brief incantatory swearing fit by Eren as he mashed buttons on the player and on the remote, they sighed in unison and sat back.

            “So, chem first?” Eren said.

            “You can go clean up if you want. We have more time now, I guess…and after that, yeah. Chem.”

            “We can just go to my house after and watch something.”

            “I think Carla might be annoyed if she starts hearing gunfire and explosions at eleven at night. We’ll watch it some other time.”

            It took them hours to get through chemistry. They’d already started one of the term’s toughest units, which meant pages upon pages of homework so the teachers could be sure the students understood the concepts, and minutes spent reviewing, repeating, and rephrasing the day’s lesson so that Armin could be sure _Eren_ understood them. Today seemed particularly difficult, so Armin was as thorough as possible. The stream of questions Eren posed didn’t bother him, even when they were similar to one another and drove Armin to wilder and more elaborate comparative metaphors and demonstrations. Chemistry wasn’t Armin’s best or favourite subject (both titles went to biology), but he’d always found it fun in much the same way math was, with the additional benefit of having broad theoretical concepts in which he could bury himself. There was so much to explore, so many mysteries left, so many ideas he couldn’t quite grasp just yet.

            This contentedness with reviewing the material stopped him from entertaining any thoughts about why such repetition was so persistently, ardently requested. Armin of course had no idea what his eyes looked like when widened and made brilliant with the reflected light of some scientific theorem or another. Certainly he had no even slight idea of how they crinkled slightly at the corners, just for the briefest moment before his mouth caught up with the smile, when having a concept recited back to him accurately or when hearing a quiz question answered correctly. It just wasn’t the sort of thing people noticed about themselves.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mikasa makes a move, Marco makes a move, and without even budging Eren and Armin seem a bit further away from each other.

            **How r we doing**

 

            Mikasa blinked at the screen of her phone, folded it up in her hands, and placed them over her knees. She stayed in this posture for at least ten seconds with raindrops plinking down along and beyond her umbrella, rattling on the metal of the near-empty bleachers. At length the phone emerged again.

 

            **Well.**

 

            Even from across the field she could see Eren’s shoulders slump as he read this response. He wasn’t supposed to have his phone on at the bench; this was the first time she’d seen him deliberately disobey a rule set down by the coaches. Hange and Levi were too distracted with the game to notice. They weren’t even losing all that badly—they were two goals down, and the opposing team wasn’t much stronger than they were. 

            That of course was what had driven Eren to desperation. There was no reason they could not win this. October was ending. This was the last game of the fall season, their game record was middling, and if they didn’t rally here for the win they might not qualify for the spring season’s tournament.

            The phone buzzed again in Mikasa’s hands.

 

            **Can u be a little more specific tho like what do i do**

**What would u do**

 

            Again Mikasa paused before she answered. The answer was needed quickly—Eren would be subbed back into the game at any moment—but she couldn’t see anything specific that anyone on the team was doing wrong. They were doing everything they could; they just couldn’t keep control of the play.

 

            **Try to focus. Follow your feet. Don’t make them chase you.**

 

            She wasn’t sure that was advice that could actually be followed, but it was all that could be offered at this point. If anything, she thought Eren was probably overthinking. He was at his best, or at least his most dynamic, when he let things be simple. The more he thought about the spring tournament the more likely the ball was to slip away from him.

 

**Do u mean don’t make my feet chase me or the other team??**

**Your feet.**

**How could they even chase me tho what**

 

            Before she thought of a response there was another rumble from her phone. Eren had just been sent back onto the field, which meant that this could only be Armin. He should at least be easier to deal with.

 

            **How is the game going?**

**Two points back.**

**They’ve got twenty minutes still, right? They can turn it around.**

 

            Such faith in his team was the best he could offer. Much though Mikasa wished Armin was there to strategize for them (Eren at least would probably be more polite to him in his responses), if he’d been present, Jean couldn’t have been. He’d been scheduled a cash shift during the game, and the only person who would or could swap with him had been Armin.

            “They’re not going to make it.”

            Mikasa was not easily startled, but she nearly shot off the bleachers. She should have recognized that profile even in her peripheral vision. Annie was standing next to the bleachers with the hood of her sweatshirt pulled up; she was staring expressionlessly out at the field. Mikasa took a moment to regroup. She pressed her nose into the wool of her scarf, inhaled deeply, and said, “What would you do?”

            “Power through it. This team’s defense isn’t strong.”

            It was the same thing the twitching muscles in Mikasa’s calves had been telling her every time one of the boys tried for a shot— _Just kick the ball_. She wasn’t sure whether it was power or precision that Eren was lacking, but she thought that if he just _did_ something, wholeheartedly, he could reconnect with the game.

            “Maybe that’s not it, though,” Annie said. Mikasa glanced over. Tried not to stare. Annie still was not looking at her; Mikasa wanted to do something to make her.

            “Then what?”

            “You break morale, the whole thing’s a waste of time.”

            “Morale…” Nothing was especially different. The miserable weather was as much a member of the team as any of the players. There was Armin’s absence, but that certainly would not have affected the entire team like this.

            “Imagine if you didn’t show. It’d affect my playing.” Mikasa looked over half a second too late to catch Annie’s gaze on her. “Sasha’s working by herself, but she’s best as an outlier, not the main attack force. The whole front line’s shot. Midfields have to work too hard. Defense can’t keep up. Eren’s not the centre, but he’s the _centre_.” Annie shook her head. Mikasa could not help but notice the way her damp hair hung down her face, flowing along the contour of her cheek. “If he’s not on top of things, none of them can be.”

            “They can do it.”

            “Reiner and Bertl might be able to hold it together long enough to give Connie the chance to score,” Annie said after holding onto the silence for a moment. “They could change things. It’s only a chance, though.”

             Mikasa listened to the rain fall and let her eyes trace the path of the play (persistently, frustratingly in the wrong direction) for a few moments before she realized that the pale smear of Annie’s hood had disappeared from her line of sight. She was fully prepared to pretend she hadn’t noticed or didn’t care. That was how most of their exchanges had gone thus far, except the one moment in an empty school hallway with her neck curved downward and Annie’s face tilted up, with Annie’s fingers tangled and tugging in her hair—that had been one secluded, inscrutable instant. Mikasa hadn’t been sure whether they were going to fight or whether she was going to stoop just a little further and kiss the girl. All this because Mikasa had caught her in the hallway after that early game, said, “You should come to practice. We could learn to work together.” Annie still didn’t come to practice. They still could hardly be bothered to pass to one another in a game.

            Mikasa was on her feet and striding lightly up along slick metal bleachers until the railing at the highest point was before her. She planted one hand on it, leaned over, and said, “Annie.”

            Her fellow forward stopped and looked up—looked at her just as coolly as she had in September. No rain reached her. She fell beneath Mikasa’s umbrella, which fell in turn to meet her. Annie caught it effortlessly.

            “If you got sick—” Mikasa said, and could feel her face burning but could not afford to care, “it would affect my playing.”  

            It was such a ridiculous thing to say. The girls had played their last game already; they were going into the spring tournament in second standing.

            Annie was not as merciless as Ymir about calling people out, but she could communicate just as much or more with a look. They found themselves just staring again, but Mikasa couldn’t translate it, if Annie was indeed trying to get anything across. Mikasa half expected Annie to drop the umbrella to the mud and stalk off, but she blinked slowly and then walked on as if there had been no interruption.

            “ _WOOOOOOOOOOOO, ATTA BOY BERTL!_ ” Mikasa spun back to face the field. The ball was sailing high through the air, over the heads of the other team’s midfields but not— _quite_ —further than their last defenceman. It plopped muddily at the feet of a rather nonplussed Jean Kirschstein, who was standing nearer to their opponents’ goal than he should have been. “KILL ‘EM, JEAN!”, Hange yelled.

 

 

            “I can’t believe you.” The grocery store’s break room had been empty, the last time Armin had checked, but when he looked up from the textbook Jean was shrugging out of his jacket on his way to his locker. Armin’s attention had been too absorbed by the diagrams of bronchioles. “Keeping up a running commentary on the game, working, _and_ studying during every spare microsecond. You’re gonna die young.”

            “Actually, because of all the local industry, the average life expectancy here is lower than the national av—”

            “ _Don’t_ —tell me stuff like that,” Jean said, holding one hand up. “I’m staying here, remember? I don’t want to hear that I’ll be dead by forty.”

            “So you’re really sure about that?”

            “Yeah. I’m not going to be getting any huge impressive scholarships and running away to Uppercrustville. Not that I’d mind—and I wouldn’t protest to getting a cut of your full-expenses-paid tuition.”

            Armin snorted and turned back to his book.  

            “Odds are I won’t be getting it.”

            “I thought you were supposed to be the smartest human on the planet.”

            “I’m really, really not. Mathematically…I’m probably not the smartest person in our grade in the city, and there’s only one Sina Scholarship for the whole _district_.”

            “Well when you put it like th—are you _serious_ —what is this supposed to be?!”

            Armin sat up a little straighter so that he could see into Jean’s recently-opened locker. Sitting on the shelf was a small brown pot from which burst a profusion of purple flowers.

            “African violets,” Armin said. When he’d been younger his grandfather had always been out in the garden or holding Armin up to see the windowsill in the kitchen, showing him the difference between any of his dozens of plants. Lately with the way his grandfather’s back had gone he was limited to what could fit on that sunny windowsill. In the summer Armin weeded the plots in the back yard, coaxed what would grow to grow healthily—but he just didn’t have the same amount of experience.

            “Did you have something to do with this?” Armin shook his head. “ _I’m going to kill Bertl_. Marco first, obviously.” Bertl was the only other member of their social circle who worked at the store; if Armin hadn’t let Marco in, there was only one other suspect. “What am I supposed to do with a bunch of—what?”

            “African violets.”

            “What do I need these for!?”

            “If he got you flowers there’s a specific connotation…”

            “First of all, flowers in a pot in my locker don’t count—this is like some kind of a housewarming gift. And anyway who said I wanted flowers!” That last bit was spoken too quickly. “God, this’s humiliating… What do I do with this?” He pulled the pot out of the locker, holding it with both hands in a gesture that expressed more care than he would have admitted.

            “Do you have a south-facing window at home? They need sunlight, especially in the winter. And don’t water them with cold water. It’s easy to damage them that way.”

            Jean had recovered enough dignity to prop one eyebrow up.

            “How do you know things like that?”

            “My grandpa has some of these. They’re nice. They’ll live a while, if you handle them properly.” Jean looked at the small bit of flora in his hands and sighed. For half a second his eyebrows shifted and he ceased to look irritable about absolutely the whole world.

            “Still going to kill him,” he muttered, and then he stowed the flowers back in his locker. “What time is your shift finished?”

            “Nine.” It was just before five o’clock; Jean must have had just enough time to shower and get into work after the game.

            “Mine too. I’ll take you home.”

            “I can just take the bus.”

            “It’s turning into sleet out there, and the bus stop isn’t that close. If cars are going to be crashing all over the place you might as well at least be in one.”

 

 

            The store was utterly dead. The stockboys were all huddled together in the frozen section, giggling about something Armin didn’t want to find out about; no manager had been seen on the floor for at least an hour; only two cashiers were still stranded out there at their registers. Nearly four hours had trickled past since Jean had arrived, and barely three people had passed through the front doors in search of food or household items.

            “Probably the weather,” Jean said from his station at register two. He was stretching his lanky arms. “I wouldn’t want to die over getting a dozen eggs either."

            Armin, who had just finished hiding a yawn behind both hands at register three, blinked blearily and looked at the nearest stretch of plate glass. Silver was streaked across the blue-black.

            “It wasn’t like this when you were playing, was it?”

            “Hell no. The game would’ve been a total unsalvageable mess if it had been.”

            “It didn’t sound like that much of a mess. You won.”

            “If I’m the one who has to score? That’s pretty bad.”

            “Mikasa said it was a good goal. She said it turned the whole game around.”

            “Really? I mean. It was okay. Thanks.”

            Armin suppressed a smile. He loved working with Jean. He was almost the lone senior on the boys’ soccer team who didn’t keep asking him why he wasn’t playing this year, and whether he was coming back, and if they’d done something to piss him off.

            “I don’t need to go getting all sparkly eyed and mushy about not seeing you at practice,” Jean said when Armin expressed his frustration about this as they were getting ready to leave. “We’re stuck four feet from each other for several hours most days, not to mention in class. I don’t know what Jaeger’s problem is, honestly. Kid needs to learn to let go a little.”

            “Eren’s not the problem.”

            Eren, in fact, had not asked him about it at all, and had not protested, and had not as much as passive-aggressively asserted his displeasure. All he’d done was ask him to every game, as if Armin hadn’t planned on going anyway.

            He’d received one text from Eren today, after the game:

 

            **Hey we won so Hange says we’re probably making it to the spring one**

 

            Admittedly Armin had no previous experience with missing games, but even on a regular day Eren was much more talkative than this. Periodically Armin would receive text messages raging about math problems, the minimum wage, a lecture his mother had given him, the cost of tuition, the glee with which the local police pursued high school students, some argument he’d been having with Mikasa—just anything that was particularly pressing at the moment and that he shouldn’t shout about aloud, for whatever reason. Armin was particularly fond of the ones that started out with a few brief, reasonably-punctuated messages and grew in fervour and frenetic energy until the screen of his phone was just a glaring wall of belligerent capital letters declaring the importance of the youth vote, or whatever it happened to be that day. Those were the times at which Armin’s side of the conversation hardly functioned as periodic interjections, but as Eren wound down more and more room opened up for Armin to contribute. Some of the best conversations they’d ever had had taken that shape, whether in person or over text. Eren really was a smart kid—he had better things to say than most of the teachers at their school, if not things directly relating to physics or mathematics. He _cared_.

            Armin did too, of course. It was just that sometimes he found himself disengaging and thinking he was more academic. Impractical. If he went off and studied neuroscience or marine biology or—whatever it turned out to be—he didn’t see how he could ever effect the sort of change Eren wanted to. He didn’t see how he could be a part of it at all, even though he wanted to be. Bare-bones texts like today’s only exacerbated it. The whole relationship was going to have to change at some point. Even if they all got through university together, Eren would stay to salvage the city, Mikasa would stay with Eren, and Armin would become superfluous whether he stayed or went.

            Distracting him from this line of thinking was the fact that Jean had taken the violets from his locker and set them on the table only to pull a wool hat over the top of the pot.

            “Jean,” Armin said. Jean grunted inquisitively; he was adjusting the fit. “Is that to keep the rain off them?”

            “I think that should do it.” He stepped back to admire his work. “Yeah, it’s good enough. Let’s go.” 

            They ran out to the car under a deluge of what was not precisely rain. As Jean complained while they ran: “Definitely slush! It’s raining slush!” Armin had honestly not expected this so early in the season, which meant his shirt was thoroughly soaked by the time he fumbled the door of Jean’s car open and threw himself into the passenger seat. It was a rusty beater of a car, made at a time when standard shift had still _been_ standard and sharp angles had been the norm.

            After nearly sliding straight beneath his own vehicle, Jean scrabbled his own way into the car as well. He spat curses through his teeth for a good five seconds before he remembered Armin was present.  

            “It’s a lot better than the bus,” Armin said when Jean looked at him awkwardly. “Thanks.”

            “Don’t thank me until you’re home in one piece. Did you see me out there? Almost bailed right under the bumper. This is going to be so much fun.” He tugged the flowerpot out from under his arm and held it towards Armin. “Could you hold this? I don’t want to murder the thing before I even get it home.” He froze up for a moment before pushing the pot into Armin’s hands. “What if it’s some kind of test?”

            “I don’t know if Marco would do that.”

            “He’s more devious than you’d think. Good-natured devious freckled jerk…”

            Given that the road was coated in an erratic layer of half-frozen ice, Jean did remarkably well. They were just a few blocks from Armin’s house when the combination of snow, ice, and rain became so intense that it turned the whole windshield into an unreadable grey slurry.

            “Uh.” It wasn’t the most encouraging thing to hear from your driver. They both felt the tires lose their purchase on the road, but they were not precisely hurtling onto the sidewalk or through anyone’s walls. “Sorry, Armin. We’re gonna die in the world’s slowest car crash,” Jean said as they glided softly and silently sideways across an intersection they couldn’t see.

            “At least you got your flowers from Marco first.”

            “They’ve kind of taken a funerary slant, now, though. Guess it’s more economical. Hate to put the guy out a large sum of money just before university.” He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. “Fuck, this is taking forever.” 

            Armin was squinting out the passenger window, but except for a few goldish blobs which must have been the lights shining through nearby windows, he couldn’t make anything out. The lights were, at least, getting closer.

            “We should be near the—” There was a grinding sound, and the whole car shuddered. “Curb.” They hadn’t quite stopped yet, though, and when they did it was with a gentle bump.

            Jean leaned forward as if seeing through the windshield was a matter of proximity. Armin supposed it was no more ridiculous than putting faith in eyes winched nearly shut. “Did I just hit something?”

            Then, tinny, from very close outside of the car: “Fffffffffuck!” Armin’s gaze slid over to meet Jean’s.

            “…Did I just hit Eren?”

            Armin didn’t remember unbuckling his seatbelt, but suddenly he was bursting out of the car. It was difficult to see with all the sleet battering his face, but there unmistakeably was Eren Jaeger, sprawled face-down on the street in front of the bumper. Mikasa was standing on the curb looking as if she was considering punching Jean’s car into the afterlife.

            “If this is Jean’s fucking car—” Eren said as he lifted himself up onto his elbows.

            “Are you alright?”, Mikasa and Armin asked at the same time in two totally different tones. Eren dragged himself out of the gutter, brushing heavy slush from the sleeves of his jacket.

            “Yeah, fine, I—oh, hi Armin. We were on our way to your house.” He kicked the nearest tire. “Nice driving, Jean, by the way! Just great.”

            “We were moving about as fast as a tectonic plate, Jaeger. Blame your reflexes.”

            “I don’t think they could probably see us,” Armin said. He could hardly make out the nearest telephone pole. Eren, however, proved he had sharp enough eyes to make out one important detail. He was looking at Armin’s chest.

            “Is that a head?”

            Armin looked down. On some level he must have been aware that he was leaving the car after all; he had the flowerpot tucked against his chest with his arms folded over it as much as they could to protect it from the precipitation. The tuque was nevertheless quite visible.

            “Flowers,” Armin said. Suddenly Mikasa was standing much closer than she had been. She planted one hand on the frame of the car and ducked her head so that she could stare past Armin, beneath the roof, and straight at Jean’s throat.

            “You got Armin flowers.” She seemed to have lost track of the question mark.

            “Those’re—”, Jean said, and then clamped his mouth shut. Armin wasn’t sure why he bothered, since the situation with Marco seemed to be such an obvious one. _Oh. Maybe it's not that obvious...?_

            “You put a hat on flowers?”, Eren said. “And I thought you were done at eight thirty. Are you teaching him now too?”

            “No,” Armin said, and was lost as to whether he could defend himself from the accusation about dressing up plant-life, or whether that would give something away that Jean would rather keep private. “We finished at nine.”

            “We’ve got math to go over, right? And Mikasa’s worried about English.”

            “We have a test,” Mikasa said. She was still staring fixedly at Jean, who was without any conscious volition beginning to tilt against the driver side window.

            “Okay, just—get in the damned car, all of you. This is ridiculous,” he said. The other three complied, all piling into the back seat this time. Shaking his head, Jean began the awkward task of getting them away from the curb without coasting again.

            “Is your leg hurt?” Mikasa asked Eren, who shook his head.  So ended the conversation; both of them were eyeing the hatted pot sitting on Armin's lap. Armin, sitting between them, stared directly ahead; it seemed like the safest route. Only once they were moving in a reasonably controlled fashion did Jean come to the rescue.

            “Aren’t you kind of unnecessarily keen though, Jaeger?  It’s a bit late in the day for a study session, right? It’s got to be past your bedtime.”

            “Some of us actually want to try—we have to get into decent schools so we can actually move this place somewhere,” Eren said.

            “Yeah, okay. Because you’re going to be the one saving the city. You know what we need more than kids in university? People looking after the fucking roads. Go into road maintenance or infrastructure whatever. I mean, what are you planning to get a degree in, exactly? Well-intentioned, over-impassioned reckless speechifying? You don’t have the brains to run the place, so it’s not like you’re going into politics or law.”

            “I don’t want to run it—but activism, or something—”

            “You’re going to have a hard time finding courses in Sign-Making and Molotov Cocktails.”

            “I know that, jackass! I go, take poli sci so I learn how all this works, and then come back and ruin it on them!”

            “You think you’re smart enough?”

            Eren made a sound like he was choking. Armin had a hand over his eyes. He thought about stepping into this debate, but wasn’t sure how to do it. Eren’s and Jean’s arguments were not nearly as bad as they’d once been—they no longer descending into brawls—but it was difficult to find a way in without angering one or both parties further.

            “I’ll work at it! And I’ll have Armin and Mikasa with me, so it’ll be fine.”

            “I am ninety-eight percent sure that Armin’s smart enough to get the hell out of here and never look back.” He glanced back in the rear view mirror. “Not to say that you’re not smart, Mikasa. You just got tangled up with one of us losers who’s never leaving.”

            “Well what exactly are you going to do, then?!”, Eren snapped. “I know you’re applying, so don’t act like you’re all superior—”

            “I never said I was _superior._  I’m just sensible and don’t go around deluding myself—”

            “Stop fighting,” Mikasa said, and they did. The rest of the drive was spent in complete silence. When they pulled up in front of Armin’s house Eren got out the left door, Mikasa got out the right, and Armin continued to sit in the middle with a pot of flowers he was increasingly suspicious was about to be foisted on him.

            “Armin, uhm…could I get you to maybe…”.

            “If you pick it up tomorrow,” Armin said. Jean nodded.

            “Yeah—thanks. Sorry. This is ridiculous. You can laugh at me forever as payback.”

            “Is there a reason you’re keeping it quiet?”

            “No! I’m just…an embarrassing loser, oh my god.” He dragged a hand down his face. “This won’t happen again, I swear.”

            “It’s fine.” Armin slid out of the car. “Thanks.”  Jean tossed a hand vaguely.

            “It turned out to be a tradeoff anyway.”

            Armin closed the door and then turned to face his house. Eren and Mikasa were waiting on the doorstep, two silhouettes before the yellow rectangle of the window. They didn’t even complain about his stalling.

            “Hi grandpa,” Armin said as soon as he stepped inside and saw the pair of worn-out shoes placed neatly on the mat. After stepping out of his own shoes he walked through to the kitchen, placed the flowerpot on the counter, and pulled the hat away. “Was work okay?”

            “It was fine,” his grandfather said from the living room. Armin poked his head in; his grandfather was already on the chair in which he slept, with his chin tucked into a blanket.

            “Is there anything you need?” The great bearded head shook gently.

            “There’s dinner on the counter.”

            “Thank you. I’ll get it later. We’re going to study.”

            He, Eren, and Mikasa trooped up the stairs to Armin’s room and set up on the floor—or mostly on the floor. Mikasa and Eren had a quiet but intense argument about who was going to go first, and when Eren won he hopped up onto Armin’s bed while Armin and Mikasa laid out their books.

            They were moving from the Shakespeare unit to one on poetry, which meant a homework assignment on some of Shakespeare’s sonnets that hadn’t been covered in class. Again Armin felt that he was as lost as Mikasa, so it was more group work than tutoring. Together they parsed “Sonnet 18” easily enough—with the avoidance of the obvious metaphors, the displacement of older conventions, the acceptance and celebration of a more realistic and less generic lover-figure.

            “That wasn’t so bad,” Armin said. Mikasa was still scribbling down a few notes, but he thought they’d done a sufficient job of talking it through. Eren, apparently bored of looking at the poster of the solar system above Armin’s bed, tugged on the elastic in Armin’s hair until it came free. Armin had forgotten he’d had it in there, which perhaps explained his headache. The tie always had to be tight or it would fall right off. Eren smoothed out the crease in Armin’s hair, and again the blond boy had to concentrate not to shut his eyes and settle into a nap.

            Now that he thought of it, it was probably some kind of Pavlovian response picked up in kindergarten. At the middle of the day the teacher had always turned out the lights and told them to sleep. On the first day of class Armin had made Eren’s formal acquaintance when the latter, in the middle of a nightmare, had clutched a fistful of his hair and dragged Armin over to him to hug like a hapless teddy bear. After a good scolding from their teacher Eren had managed not to do this again, but at all subsequent nap times he’d always planted himself next to Armin with a look of grim seriousness. Every day he'd run his fingers through Armin's hair until his frown faded and he fell asleep. He’d said it was to say sorry to the hair for pulling it.   

            His fingers weren’t sticky with whatever he’d eaten for lunch now, and considering that they spent so much time clenched into fists they were surprisingly gentle, and comforting, and…

            _We have a test_ , Armin reminded himself sternly. He straightened his posture.

             “What’s the next one?”

            “We choose between seventy three or one hundred and sixteen,” Mikasa said. They turned to the corresponding page in their respective anthologies. Armin had finished reading “Sonnet 73” and was puzzling over an interpretation when he realized that Eren’s chin was about an inch above his shoulder as he leaned over from the bed to read it.

            “What the hell?”, Eren said. “That’s horrible. I thought sonnets were love poems.”

            “It’s old age,” Mikasa said.

            Armin nodded and pinched the bridge of his nose and looked again at the couplet. “This thou perceiv’st, which makes thy love more strong, / To love that well, which thou must leave ere long.” The introductory note to the poem said it was probably addressed (as so many of the sonnets were) to the speaker’s lover, but all the same Armin could not help but think of his grandfather—

            _Stop—stop. He’s only in his seventies, and he’s healthy. I’ll be able to take care of him._

_I won’t be here for at least four years, though, and I’ll almost definitely be going for an MA at the least…_

            “I don’t want to write on this one,” Mikasa said quietly.

            “Me either.” Armin had never been on a boat before—he’d never even seen a body of water bigger than the duck pond at the nearest park—but he felt seasick.

            “Maybe the other one’s worse,” Eren said, and when Armin turned to that page he leaned forward again to read it over his shoulder. “Oh.” His breath ceased to fall on Armin’s shoulder; Armin heard him flop back onto the bed.

            “It…seems a little unreasonable, but alright,” Armin said.

            “Unreasonable?”, Mikasa said.

            “It’s not love unless it stays literally constant and fixed…? That just…doesn’t seem…practical? Or fair? I don’t know.” He gave his head a quick shake. “He probably knows better than me.” The object of the assignment wasn’t to pick a fight with an Early Modern playwright, and even if it had been he could only assume he was going to lose. So he and Mikasa made a few half-hearted structural observations and notes on rhetorical devices employed, spent an hour quizzing one another on the condensed notes they’d made as study materials on _The Tempest_ , and then deemed themselves prepared enough for the moment. It was Wednesday, and the test wasn’t until Monday.  

            “Alright,” Armin said, putting aside his English anthology in favour of his math textbook. Mikasa stretched her arms over her head and then tipped backwards to stretch out on the floor. “Did you do the homework questions already?”

            While Mikasa and Eren had been going over plot points and theatrical conventions, Eren had pulled out his binder. He had it open on his lap now and had been scowling at it for the past ten minutes or so.

            “All of them but four. I couldn’t get them.”

            “Alright, let’s take a look…”

            A new concept had been introduced in class that day, and Eren was having difficulty grasping it. They weren’t even through the first of the problems before Mikasa’s breaths broadened out. Armin only noticed because, having turned to face the bed so he could help Eren, he saw that his friend was glowering in Mikasa’s direction. She’d taken her open anthology as a pillow.

            “Mikasa, you can’t sleep—”

            “It’s fine,” Armin said.

            “I didn’t sleep when she was studying. And she’s not the one who had a game today,” Eren grumbled, jutting his lower lip out like a second-grader.

            Armin did not want to have to say, ‘She’s also virtually guaranteed to get a free ride scholarship whether or not she passes a few tests, so why not let her sleep?’ Eren was already staring at his textbook the way he’d glared at elementary schoolyard bullies. They didn’t even have a test impending—not for another week or two—but Armin of all people knew that academic stress could knock you off your normal axis at any random moment.  

            “You are, though,” Armin said. “So maybe you should get some rest? It’s late, and this probably won’t be collected anyway. We can go over it tomorrow.”

            “No—keep going until I get it.”

            “We have class in the morning. Aren’t you working after? You really need to sleep.”

            “I want to get it!”

            It didn’t feel right. The normal yellow glow was gone, or had dimmed low enough that the cheap electric lighting overpowered it. Desperation had not been commonly seen on Eren’s face since they’d reached tenth grade, when people had learned that picking on Armin or fighting with Eren meant facing down Mikasa (and, after Reiner’s consolidation of the boys’ soccer team and Mikasa’s indirect leadership of the girls’, both full-fledged teams). It certainly had no place here. There had been too many blanket forts and improvised stories told around upturned flashlights; there had been too many unexpected naps and spilled juiceboxes and scrapes examined. Armin’s room had been hallowed ground ever since that first time he’d opened the window to Eren and Mikasa after his parents’ deaths. Eren should not have needed that look on his face here.

            “Eren,” Armin said, and couldn’t think of anything else other than the entirely useless, “Don’t worry so much…” It didn’t even merit a response. Eren continued scratching out formulae. “Your math marks aren’t going to be what schools are mostly looking at anyway. Data management next term is probably all you’ll need for going into the social sciences…”

            “I know that.”

            “Is it the flowers?” It seemed like a reasonable supposition, given Mikasa’s undisguised leap into overprotectiveness. Eren had spent a large portion of his life punching people who looked at Armin wrong, and since none of the trio had ever dated anyone in their lives, maybe it was unfamiliar enough to be dangerous. Maybe he was struggling now with the urge to punch Jean and the recognition that it wasn’t justified. “Those aren’t really…what they look like. They aren’t even mine. And my crush on Jean pretty much died by eleventh grade.” Eren shook his head sharply.

            “It’s not that. I just want to get these solved.” He was still leaving marks on the page, apparently at random.

            “…Here, you forgot the negative sign,” Armin said, touching the page to show where—mostly so that Eren would stop scrawling shapeless squiggles, which only seemed to be distressing him more. Eren hissed a curse against his knuckles and added the sign, squinting now and holding the pencil so tightly Armin wondered whether he really was planning the grisly demise of his own homework. “I make that mistake a lot. They’re easy to overlook…”

            He might as well have been talking to the sleeping Mikasa. Actually, she might have woken up to listen to him.

            Armin rested his forehead on his knees and shut his eyes.

            “You know those’re mom flowers?”, Eren said suddenly. Armin didn't lift his head. 

            “What?”

            “African violets. Are for moms. You didn’t know that? I thought you were all about…plants, and stuff.” Armin shook his head. His concern was mostly with keeping them _alive_ —he knew flowers had associations, but he’d never looked into them. “Oh. Well they’re a traditional present for moms. So obviously I’m not worried because even if Jean was flirting with you he’d be doing it really badly.” _Oh, poor Marco…I’ll just not tell either of them that_. “So it’s not like you’re getting smooth-talked or tricked or anything. And you can handle him anyway. You’re fine. I know you’re fine. Whether you want flowers from him or not—he’s really okay. Actually. And even if he turned out to not be I know where to find him so I could beat him up if he made you cry or anything so that’s just not the point at all.”

            Apparently it did not matter if Armin noted that the flowers had _really actually not been for him_ , so he didn’t bother addressing it again. He pried his forehead from the fabric of his jeans and looked at Eren, who would not look at him. 

            “Then what _is_ the point?”

            Eren pretended he had not heard.

            “C’mon, Armin, just…help me?”      

           

            Eren and Mikasa left at three in the morning. The sleet was still falling with its steady rush of _thup_ sounds against the ground, but the best Armin could do was tell his friends to be careful. Neither one answered him, Mikasa because she was still tousle-haired and blurry-eyed with sleep, and Eren because of—whatever was affecting him.

            When he made it back upstairs Armin hardly remembered to brush his teeth, and when he finally dropped onto his bed his stomach made an empty sound—the weakest growl imaginable. He’d studied straight through his dinner break; there was probably a cold plate down on the kitchen counter for him still, if his grandpa hadn’t put it in the fridge. For a moment Armin considered getting it, but the thought just made his stomach flip unpleasantly. He closed his eyes. The blanket felt rough beneath his face. He wished he knew what was wrong.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Looking at the word count now, this chapter is...way longer than I intended it to be. Oops. 
> 
> I'm hoping to get into Eren's perspective more with the next chapter. I've been neglecting it because he's difficult for me to write, but I really want to give it an attempt.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eren doesn't know what he’s doing, Armin doesn't know what Eren’s doing, and everyone else knows what Eren’s doing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just as a warning, there is a bit of talk about/influenced by alcohol in this chapter!

            Eren did not go over to Armin’s house after work on Thursday. He did not do anything after work on Thursday. Yes, he was a bit sore after the game. Yes, he was a bit bruised after Kirschstein had hit him with his car. Yes, he should have been tired after a day of school and a long shift, especially at a tyrant-run burger place full of unruly kids and unrulier adolescents out to wreak havoc on Halloween. But the problem was that he was the _opposite_ of tired—his mind wouldn’t slow its whirring, but since there was nothing he could do and no place he could dispense with this energy, it kept sputtering and tripping over itself. He wanted to—to practice for a soccer season that had ended, to study for a test he didn’t have, to apply to schools before it was time and get every scholarship, every single scrap of funding he could find. He wanted to grab Armin by the shoulders and say that he was sorry for something he couldn’t exactly define, and that he’d let him go and do whatever he wanted to do—go explore the night sky or become a surgeon or study cute sea creatures or whatever it was going to be, because Eren would be fine and did not want to force him to stay in a place he knew Armin hated.

            But there was the problem. He wanted to _say_ that; he wasn’t sure he was prepared for what would follow. Aside from the necessities of employment, Eren was not used to feeling one thing and doing another. Generally if he wanted something he would say that, or he would just go and get it; but he wanted Armin to be free and happy and fulfilled, and he wanted Armin with him, and he wanted to stay here in this city. These were irreconcilable; he was being pulled in three directions and was able to move in none of them. He couldn’t even say anything about it without being afraid that he was inadvertently emotionally blackmailing his best friend. 

            For the moment, pacing was the best he could do, circling around and around his room. He was kneading his temples and throwing a guilty glance every now and then at his phone, which lay half-submerged in the blankets on his bed. Armin had texted him at eight to ask whether he was coming over to review; it was almost nine, and Eren still hadn’t answered.

            _He’s going to think I’m mad at him fuck this is—not fair, this is— **what do I do** —_

            He was so far from being angry. He was not jealous of Jean; he was not miffed about the missed soccer game; he was just sick at the thought that flowers from people other than him and missed moments were going to become the inevitable irreversible norm. Jean had been right, after all. Armin was too smart for all of this. His mind was too brilliant for this washed-out city. Armin deserved the sea and the stars and enough light to make his eyes shine. Keeping him away from all that would be cruel to Armin in the first place and to society in the second; there was so much he could give, if he was provided the right venue and allowed the time to talk. Up until the day before Eren hadn’t really considered what would happen _after_ university. Just getting there along with Armin and Mikasa had been daunting enough. But now even that didn’t seem good enough if Armin was going to vanish into some brilliant academic haze the moment they graduated. Eren had never really imagined life without Armin in it.

            At length Eren halted at his bed. The pacing was making him dizzy, and Eren was not all that given to brooding. He was better when it came time to move. So he picked up his phone and started to reply to Armin, saying yeah he was coming over and sorry for the delay, but was interrupted by an incoming text from Historia asking him whether he was on his way.

            Right. It was Halloween. People had parties. People _danced_ at parties. He and Mikasa had successfully dragged Armin to a few, and never yet had he danced. He always lingered near the fringes; conversations bubbled along pleasantly with anyone who stopped by to see him. For all the years of being shoved and sneered at for—what, Eren didn’t know, being small, being vivid, having emotions other than preteen vindictiveness—for all that, Armin had wound up being so well-liked in their own social circle. Close with Jean, close with Marco, close with Reiner and Bertl, with Connie, even with the nigh-unapproachable Annie—he’d done so well.

            And yet Eren still wanted to know what he looked like when he was dancing. He’d be terrible at it, never having done it before. Probably he’d read about it and could apply some kind of theory, but it wasn’t strictly about formulae. He’d need to stumble his way through at first—he’d need—somebody to show him, maybe, someone to lean up against, someone for his eyes to trace until he learned the movements and then someone to match those movements _to_ — 

            Eren hurled his phone into his pillow and wheeled out of his room; he marched across the landing and walked straight into the door opposite his own. He staggered back, clutching his nose.

            “Mikasa! Why’s your door closed?” There was a vague mumble from somewhere beyond the chipped white paint. Since it didn’t seem to take the shape of ‘I’m changing,’ Eren walked right in. Mikasa was lying on her bed, supporting her chin with her hands and peering studiously down at her phone.

            He plopped down onto the edge of her bed, his earlier haste blunted somewhat by the pain in his nose. It wasn’t often he was in this room; he and Mikasa were close in a lot of ways, but not in others. Generally speaking she was the one who went looking for him, so he hadn’t had much cause to notice how much the old pink paint was showing through the cracks in the cool blue coat. His parents had painted the room for her when she’d first arrived—she hadn’t wanted pink, she’d said. It was one of the first sentences he’d heard fall from her. Given that she wore pink freely enough it did not seem to be a problem with the colour itself. Eren thought maybe her old bedroom in her parents’ house had been pink, but he made a point of not asking about things he didn’t think she’d want to think about.

            There was a lot they didn’t talk about. He didn’t worry about Mikasa like he did about Armin. There was something less inviting about it when she was so competent and expressionless, which wasn’t to say that Armin was _incompetent_ , but you saw it when he needed help. Mikasa always seemed to have a handle on things.

            That said…

            Eren cleared his throat, folded his arms across his chest, and scowled at the carpet.

            “You okay? You’ve been weird lately,” he said. It came out rough, and he wasn’t sure whether he’d cleared his throat to make this happen or in a vain attempt to avoid it.

            “So have you.”

            “Well everyone’s been weird lately, so I guess that makes it…less weird, overall. But still.”

            The bed crinkled beneath him. Eren was not _so_ unfamiliar with her room that he suspected her quilt of being made of paper, so he looked down. Glossy university pamphlets were spread out over her bed, bright with trees and smiles and colourful promises of success. Always it was money promised—good rates of employment after graduation, high wages, prestigious establishments. It scraped at the back of his neck sometimes when he thought too hard about it. 

            “When did you pick these up? I didn’t know you were looking at so many…” She shrugged; Eren sifted through them. “Wow, some of these are pretty far away. You’re thinking of going all the way out to the mountains?”

            “No.” 

            “Are you coming with me and Armin, then?” She nodded. “You’re not just going because I am, right? You’ve got to actually want to go.”

            “I want to go,” Mikasa said. 

            “Are you sure?”

            She was silent for a moment, and then finally looked up from her phone. Lately Eren had started to wonder whether those black eyes were as inscrutable as he’d always thought, or whether she really was showing emotion there and he just couldn’t always read it.

            “I don’t know what I want. But I think I should look. So I want to go.”

            “Okay.” That decreased the pressure in his chest somewhat. Dragging a friend through four years of university they weren’t going to use and didn’t especially want to endure was the last thing he’d wanted. “There’s a party. Somewhere. I forget. People keep asking me if the Scowl Squadron’s going.” He forgot who had coined the phrase—it sounded like Connie, but it could have just as easily been Reiner or Jean. It was popularly believed that Eren, Mikasa, and Armin knew how to smile only in each other’s presence, despite all evidence to the contrary. “Are you going?”

            Mikasa shook her head.

            “I don’t feel well.”

            “You should’ve had a better coat yesterday. I don’t know why you thought a hoodie was enough.”

            “I had my scarf.”

            “Why would that be enough in weather like that? It’s just wool.”

            “It was only raining at first.”

            “So why not an umbrella?”

            Mikasa’s silence allowed Eren’s mind to stray. It plunged right back to the problem that had sent him charging out of his room in the first place. 

            “Maybe I’ll ask Armin…”

            “Have a shower first.”

            “Why? Oh. I smell like I was swimming in the deep fryer. Great.” He stood up.

            “Are you alright?”, Mikasa asked. “I think you should just…say something. To Armin.”

            “Yeah.” He wasn’t sure if they meant the same thing, but he’d lost the will to discuss it, with her or with Armin himself. What was he even supposed to say? _Hey Armin want to come to a party with a guy who smells like fries? The person whose presence might convince you this isn’t a weak attempt at a date is staying home but don’t worry about that, it’s probably fine right…?_

            “Eren, shut the…”

            The buzzing drew Mikasa’s gaze downward. The curve of her shoulders softened as she dropped her face closer to the glow of her phone’s screen. The status of her door no longer seemed very important. 

            Eren shambled back to his room and found his phone again. It had been too long to tactfully respond to Armin’s initial query without a pretext, so he decided to put that off for a moment. Better to be surer of his footing first. After him and Mikasa, the closest person to Armin was Jean—and in any case he had the answer to the most obvious question. 

**Hey**

**So are you trying to get into armin’s pants or what**

**Fjuck jaeager ur gross ys it gotta be gettn in ppls pants fck off hes cute ok**

**Not like sex cute but lije a litle deer r smth. Deer in floofy blue sweaters**

**U couldtry to b kinda respectful abit maybe**

**Not cuz hes cute. but he is. Also like. a person tho?**

**Y cant u just say dating or smth fuckc hes ur best friend u could be less terrible**

 

            Historia’s party must have been seeing some amount of success. Jean was certainly in attendance, so the worry she’d filed the last time she’d contacted Eren that nobody was going to turn up was unjustified. Apparently Jean was enjoying himself, or at least enjoying the beverages.  

**Could you answer the fucking question**

**You won’t will you**

**Fine I wasn’t going to duel you for his honour or anything just don’t screw around ok?? He’s got enough shit to be stressed about**

**Omg im at a party calm dowwn ive got other priortes**

**And I was right ur fuckin cluelessss**

**Im not gonna steal ur boyfrend eren ive got one already**

**Bullshit**

**[Picture message received]**

**Tadaaa**

Eren opened the image at about the same instant it occurred to him it might contain something he didn’t want to see—but it turned out to be innocent enough. It showed a sloppily grey-green zombie with an undercut and a vampire whose freckles were still visible through white make-up. They were making exaggerated kissy-faces at one another, though Marco looked like he was struggling not to laugh.

            This was good news for multiple reasons—one of the major ones being that this way Armin wouldn’t finally have gotten the attention of his long-term crush only to have to break it off with him in order to start at university. Then there was the worse possibility Eren had considered: that they would not break it off and Armin would pine like Eren was beginning to believe Mikasa was going to. If her phone was fused to her hand all of a sudden it meant there was _someone_ she’d suddenly grown attached to, and unless that person was Armin (unlikely, Eren thought), there was a separation impending. Better if it was just one of them in that state and Eren didn’t have two weepy, despondent best friends to try to cheer up. He just wanted them to be happy.

            It occurred to him that Armin had not been smiling much lately, and that when he had it had been this wan, faded thing.

            He did not want to think about that.

           

**Wow**

**So you finally asked eh**

**Yeahhh asked him to the party workin out gret so far**

**Ykno expect u keep textn me**

 

            If Jean could do it there was no reason Eren couldn’t. Jean clearly knew what Eren was about, here, and it hadn’t even been directed at him. Armin was ten times smarter than both of them combined, so surely he must have known by now. Eren after all did not excel at subtlety. He knew he’d been staring, and he knew he’d been blushing and smiling aimlessly and generally being insufferable. He clenched his phone between his hands for a moment before bringing up Armin in his contacts menu.

 

**So there’s a party**

 

            Armin's answer, as always, was nearly instantaneous. 

**Historia’s, right?**

**Yeah**

**Do you uh**

**Want to**

**?**

**I’m helping grandpa give out candy. Have fun though!**

 

            Eren had no way of knowing how much deliberation that last piece of punctuation had required. He sighed, flopped back onto the mattress, and tossed his phone to the far side of his bed so that he couldn’t ask ‘Are you wearing a costume?’ Better not to know at this point. The image of Armin beaming down at toddlers and handing over candy was difficult enough to contend with when he was in ‘floofy blue sweaters.’ Floofy blue sweaters were fast becoming Eren’s favourite articles of clothing, especially on warm days when the sleeves were inevitably pushed up and bunched around Armin’s elbows. He couldn’t really think of anything that would be _more_ attractive than that.

            Well. Once he put his mind to it, sometimes Armin wore those button-up, white-collar shirts, or flannel ones unbuttoned over his t-shirts (Eren lived for summer, when he wore t-shirts more often, though the effect wasn’t the same as the rolled-up sleeves). And actually anything that showed his collarbones would be amazing, though Eren didn’t think Armin owned any shirts like that. Eren had an excess of them, though, so maybe—

            He clapped his hands over his eyes so hard his skin stung.

            _Don’t do this. This is how to get into trouble, especially right after getting shut down. Just don’t. It’s not worth screwing up our friendship over._

            When his phone beeped Eren scrambled over to it with humiliating speed, and then sagged into the blankets again when he saw who it was. 

 

**Y don’t u ask him out erennn he’d say yes**

**Hes preoccpdi with u :]**

**The fuck am I doin though y am I jaegermister support team allof a sudden r we even friends who knows**

**Yeah we’re friends Jean fuck off**

**I thought you had a party to focus on**

**Marco ditched you didn’t he**

**Ur lying on Historia’s couch right now sulking don’t even try to bullshit me**

**Fuck u**

**Yeah**

**But only cuz im not really**

**Feeling good uhm. he’s getting Ymir Ymr’s going to drop me off**

**Yeah ok**

**Wait is Ymir drunk too**

**Jean you fuck answer me if Ymir’s as drunk as you are don’t go with her**

**Or let her go anywhere**

**Get Marco to tackle her or smth**

**Kneecap her with a crutch**

**He might not survive that though bad call I take it back**

**JEAN**

**Don’t worry Eren :) Ymir hasn’t been drinking (yet). Poor Jean was celebrating a little too hard, I think. Or he’s just a huge lightweight, like Ymir thinks.**

**…Historia?**

**Yes! Jean dropped his phone. I guess you guys aren’t coming?**

**Doesn’t look like it**

**Don’t worry. I’m having a Christmas party too ;)**

**Why are you winking at me**

**I’ll make sure there’s mistletoe for you and Armin. Do you think he’d look better in antlers or a Santa hat? ;) ;) ;) ;) ;)**

            Eren had about five simultaneous reactions to this in five clashing colours, with the end result that he choked and spluttered and dropped his phone three times in trying to respond.

**STOPP READING JEAN’S TEXT MESSAGES STOP IT STOP THIS HAS GOT TO BE A BREACH OF TRUST OR SOMETHING**

**I don’t know. Jean seems to think it’s funny  ^_________________________^**

**IF ANY OF YOU SAYS ANYTHING ABOUT THIS TO ARMIN**

**Seriously Historia please**

**This is already such a huge mess don’t tellhim**

**Eren I wouldn’t do that to you! You really should consider talking to him though or I might have to deck him out as beautifully as possible for Christmas. I’ll make him look like an angel. I really am deadly serious 0_0**

            Eren groaned and wondered why it was always the big-eyed, sweet-smiled, endearing ones that had access to the forces of true evil.

**It’s more complicated though**

**Endgame here isn’t me and Armin it’s Armin happy ok?**

**Please don’t do anything**

**Don’t even spread this around if Reiner hears about this he’ll frogmarch me to Armin’s and make me confess**

**I won’t say anything to anyone! See you in class :D**

            Of course, tomorrow morning when Jean checked his phone he was going to find this incriminating conversation which all but explicitly stated Eren’s romantic interest in Armin. Jean, who worked with Armin many times a week and had two classes with him and was his closest friend beyond Eren and Mikasa—Jean who would love nothing more than to piss Eren off—was now equipped to absolutely humiliate him. Jean was not malevolent; he wouldn’t tell Armin anything with the intention of causing serious harm either to him or to Eren. But what would look to him like an embarrassing moment could potentially have ramifications not only this school year, but also in the four following it and after.

            “AaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAARGHHHH!” He hurled the phone across the room and didn’t bother looking where it landed; it clunked satisfyingly. “ _FUCK!_ ”

            “Eren! Stop breaking things!”, Carla called from the first floor.

            Alright. No. This was unreasonable. It was Armin; he loved Armin, and Armin loved him, and that had never been anything but certain. The precise hue it took on was not that important. He’d meant what he’d said to Historia. The problem was with the exhaustion blunting Armin’s normal enthusiasm—exhaustion which stemmed at least in part from Eren’s own academic struggles. Armin was set on hauling all of them to school together. Mikasa was already more than carrying her own weight, so Eren just had to pick up his feet and they should be fine. Better to do everything he could on his own time so that when he did go to Armin for help it could be briefer and Armin could rest.

            _Sunday. Have to get everything done by Sunday_ , Eren thought as he sat up and looked around for his binders. Honestly, he didn’t favour his math homework’s chances when he was in a mood like this. He was going to get through it if he had to stay up all night.   

            The sunlight finally reached just the right angle to flush red across Armin’s closed eyelids. He winced slightly and caught a groan before it made it out of his throat with the unintended result that it squeaked. When he raised his head his hand lifted automatically to his cheek, which was indented with the spiral binding of the notebook he’d been using as a pillow. In the process his elbow nudged the mouse, and the screen before him lit up. The half-completed application forms glared out at him from the ancient monitor. His session with the online application process had certainly timed out by this point, but he glanced at the clock on the screen anyway. Ten in the morning—he’d only been out a few hours, but his neck felt like he’d been hunched over like that for weeks. Leaning back and stretching didn’t much help, but it felt more productive than slouching over and squinting grumpily at the screen.

            He closed the webpage. Better to wait until he was more fully conscious so this didn’t happen again, and so he didn’t wind up applying to a program in orthodontics or some other too-specific program. For the moment, he was going with general sciences; he could specialize as he went, once he had the courses and professors and resources before him. It was too difficult to choose.

            So he grabbed his notebook—full of course lists and admission averages, tuition costs and entrance scholarships, student ratings, co-op opportunities, anything that had a sliver of a chance of being relevant—and stumbled out of the study. He and his grandfather had converted it a few years after his parents’ deaths. All they’d done, really, was take the bed out and stow most of the personal effects in boxes in the closet. The bookshelves and the desk stayed, and Armin’s grandfather had gotten a cheap, dusty old computer for Armin to use for his assignments (one of the things Armin was saving for for next year was a laptop so that he didn’t have to spend all his study hours in the dimness of the university library). His parents' room wasn’t a place he liked to spend too much time in. It had been years and years, but it still seemed to smell like his parents.

            He intended to go to his bedroom and get changed. Last night at about two in the morning he’d woken up in a cold sweat with the realization that it was November, the application period had begun, and he’d totally forgotten to get started.

            “…Are you sure? I don’t think it’s working. _No don’t put mom on, I—_ hi, mom. No, I don’t know. Something to do with the wires, maybe…? I think I’ve got them right but nothing’s happening.”

            The voice stopped Armin halfway across the landing, turned his feet towards the stairs, and tugged him down to the first floor. He padded over to the doorway of the living room and found Eren crouching before the cabinet on which the television sat, wires looped about and around him and paper littering the scene.

            “I know it’s not difficult! It’s just this is such an old TV—argh. Okay, don’t worry about it. I’ll figure it out. Yeah, I will. _Yeah!_ It’ll be fine. …Bye.” He pocketed his phone and then bent his neck down once more to study the machine resting on his folded legs.

            “Is that a DVD player?”

            Eren looked around and for a moment the habitual scowl dissolved away completely.       

            Ah. _Ah_. Armin was standing in the doorway in blue pyjama bottoms and a black t-shirt, rubbing his eye with one hand and hugging a notebook to his chest with the other. _Ahh_.

            _Focus, focus…_

            “Yeah. I’m just having some trouble hooking it up. Your grandpa let me in on his way out.”

            “I thought he didn’t work until later…”

            “He was going to get groceries, I think.” Armin didn’t question it or wonder what the hell Eren was doing here at ten in the morning on a Sunday, unannounced; it didn’t even occur to him. He picked his way over the scattered detritus from the machine’s unwrapping and settled on the carpet next to Eren, so close their knees bumped. He tossed his notebook someplace on the floor behind him.

            “Can I see it?” Eren passed the player over. “Where’s Mikasa?”

            “Sick. She said I should go out so she doesn’t get me too.”

            A crease appeared between Armin’s eyebrows as he sorted deftly through the wires, straightening them with careful fingers.

            “Is she alright?”

            “Not very happy, right now, but it’s just a flu. Dad says he doesn’t think she needs to go into the hospital.”

            “Okay. You can stay here tonight if you want.”

            “Really?”

            “Why not? We can stop at your house tomorrow morning so you can change and pick up your school things. It’s a shame, though…we have that test tomorrow, and I think she still wanted to review.”

            Eren smiled without meaning to. Sometimes, even after knowing him for more than a decade, Armin amazed him. Mikasa did not make it easy to worry about her.

            “She said she’ll be fine—she’s got nothing to do but look over her notes anyway. And I mean, you don’t need any extra studying, obviously. This is more important.”

            Armin looked up from the machine, flattening his hands onto it protectively.

            “Wh—what is? Do we have a test? Did I forget one—”

            “No! There’s no schoolwork or anything at all, I made sure. It’s your birthday!”

            “It’s n—” But he knew the date. The realization that it was November third was what had dragged him out of sleep at such an awful hour the night before. “Oh.”

            “I’m glad I came by now. I brought food! Well, it’s popcorn. It’s food-like. And your grandpa made you a cake already—it’s in the kitchen—Mikasa wanted me to bring you this—” He hooked the strap of his backpack with one hand, dragged it over, and pulled from it a somewhat misshapen present wrapped in gold-coloured and drastically over-taped paper.

            “You guys don’t have to get me presents…”, Armin said as Eren pushed it into his hands.

            “This was super important to her. She made me help her wrap it so it’d look nice…I kind of let her down, but…”

            Armin was tearing into the paper in the most satisfying, imprecise, doubt-assuaging manner possible. The first object to emerge, and the biggest, was a box of strawberry pop-tarts.

            “Yeah, I don’t know why that,” Eren said. “We weren’t sure when your grandpa was working, and she said you shouldn’t have to cook for yourself on your birthday, but…”

            “I used to trade her for these at lunch,” Armin said. “I’d get these, and she’d get cookies or whatever I had. Ahh, I’d forgotten about it…!” There was another item taped to the side of the box, which Armin pulled off and unwrapped just as quickly. It was a packet of pens, the particular sort he saved for exam-taking since they were less likely to cramp his hand into a petrified, useless claw. There was no note or card attached, but this was ammunition; the basic message was clear enough. _Kick some ass, Armin_. He could practically feel her hand squeezing his shoulder. Armin brought his knees up to his chest, or as close as they could go when he had a DVD player sitting on them. It was the same posture Eren had seen him take so often lately, but it was in a whole different language here—not defensive but protective, like a box of cardboardy foodstuffs and a packet of cheap pens were the most precious items imaginable.

            “She’s really sorry she couldn’t be here.”

            “Oh—tell her she doesn’t have to be, alright? This is amazing, and she didn’t have to get me anything, and I…” He dropped his gaze to the player again and resumed fiddling with it. “You guys know you don’t have to do things like this. I mean we’re—wait. Did you buy this?”

            “The player? Yeah—”

            “I thought you’d just brought yours over—Eren that’s way too expensive—”

            “It wasn’t, though! They’re pretty cheap now, since people don’t use them so much. Next year we’ll probably watch everything on your computer or mine, and you can leave this here for your grandpa, to kind of—keep him company.” The way Armin’s lower eyelids lifted, just by a barely-noticeable fraction, told Eren this had been a misstep. “I mean—he’ll miss you, obviously, a lot, and—” It was hard to sort this out when his interior monologue was so swamped with self-directed vitriol. “I just mean your old one’s broken—you should have a new one. Besides, we need it.” He went for his backpack again and this time produced a stack of rental DVD cases. “I asked for the worst ones they had, and this is what we’ve got.” He spread the cases out before them.

            “Wow, this looks awful… Which do you want to watch?”, Armin asked.

            “I thought we could do all of them. Like a marathon. The worst and most painful marathon.”

            “…That sounds perfect.” He finally gave the DVD player his full attention and had it sorted out and operational within thirty seconds.

            “Are you literally good at everything…?”, Eren asked as he handed over the first movie.

            “Not cooking,” Armin said. Eren laughed. “I’m really terrible at basketball, too. Drawing. And anything with pouring—do you remember that lab in tenth grade? It’s a good thing it was such weak acid, or I think I would have really damaged both me and Mikasa…” He paused and stared thoughtfully forward. “I think I might die over the course of postsecondary education. There are going to be a lot of labs.”

            “Get a good lab partner.”

            “In every class?”

            “Go into history instead, then! We could have courses together.”

            “Is history what you’re settling on?”

            “I was looking at programs, and—I think it wouldn’t hurt to minor in it, you know? It’d be good background. Ah hell—okay, I wasn’t going to talk about school stuff. C’mon, let’s get going here.”

            “Right,” Armin said, throwing the disk into the tray, snapping it shut, and then hopping onto the couch. He was biting his lip in a pointless effort to hide that he was smiling. Much as he loved providing commentary on the acting, the script, the plotholes, Armin did not enjoy these movies ironically. There was something satisfying about the adrenaline rush, and he’d seen so many that it was fun sometimes to look at how they played with or played into their various tropes. They were silly, and they were simple, and they were fun.

            Three gun battles and a car chase later Armin’s grandfather got back from the grocery store, and Eren took advantage of the moment Armin went to help him with the groceries to text Jean. He’d avoided him up until now, since he hadn’t had a good chance to talk to Armin in private since Halloween and had wanted to be sure what exactly was happening.

 

**Thanks for not telling him**

**Telling who what?**

**Armin?**

**Yeah I deleted that whole conversation first thing Friday morning. I’m not going to be the guy dropping your embarrassing mess of a life on Armin’s lap.**

**Also I don’t need the world knowing I misspelled ‘fluffy.’**

**Seriously though thanks it means a lot I thought I was dead**

**Yeah no problem.**

**Hey wait. Does that mean you’re going for it? On his birthday and everything. Very sly Jaeger.**

**Ok I am the opposite of sly**

**I know. That’s what makes it so fucking embarrassing that it’s taking you two this long to sort this out. World’s smartest person and world’s most obvious person and you can’t just say it.**

**Inexcusable.**

**I don’t want to hear that from the guy who JUST asked Marco out**

**And no I’m not going for anything I’m not even going to mention it**

**More important stuff going on rn**

**I’ll sort this out later when everything’s not so all over the place**

**Yeah yeah. Whatever. Go put a huge smile on the birthday kid’s face.**

**Working on it**

 

  

            Before Armin opened his eyes—before he even placed the source of the cheesy, over-powered music—the first thing he was sensible of was the steady thrum pressed up against his ear. When the half-familiar musical strains did compel him to open his eyes he found the menu screen blaring yellow and green light across the room; the movie had ended while he’d slept. With one hand Armin searched the cushion next to him for the remote; after getting through six (and a half) movies in almost one sitting, he was proficient enough with the new controls to turn the thing off without looking or prying his head from Eren’s chest. He and Eren had fallen together at the centre of the couch. The other boy had his arms folded, but not rigidly in front of his chest as if to guard himself. They rested loosely about his middle, palms turned upward. His head was tilted against and over the back of the couch; his throat was exposed, his eyes were shut, and his breathing was deep and slow. 

            Armin had always thought Eren looked good in green; now with the light from the screen shifting over him like sunlight through tree branches, Armin confirmed it. He hoped that, whatever school they went to, there would be trees to sit under. 

            A cursory glance around the room confirmed that his grandfather had not returned from work. Armin wasn’t sure of the time, but he’d lost track of his phone sometime between cake and the third movie and wasn’t, at the moment, particularly concerned with finding it.

            “Hey, Eren,” he said gently, touching the other boy’s knee. “We should get to bed.” Eren dropped his head forward.

            “Hhuh…?”

            “You’ll hurt your neck sleeping here.” Eren brought his face up, and when he opened his eyes the first thing he saw were Armin’s.

            “Yeah,” he said, croakily, and promptly sank down on the couch. A hand went to his stomach. “I ate too much.”

            “I think grandpa was joking when he said he didn’t want to come home to any leftovers.”

            “I know that _now_ …”

            “You did a good job though.”

            “Well, anything to make you proud, you know.” His hand moved up a little to a spot of damp on his shirt, and he got the silliest, slowest grin on his face as he remembered the press against his chest while he'd slept. “Got comfortable, yeah?” Armin returned the grin; he couldn't managed to be embarrassed to have drooled on another human being if that human being happened to be Eren. 

            “How could I not?” 

            Armin staggered to his feet, grabbed Eren by both his wrists, and hauled him, slumping, upright. He didn’t seem quite certain of where his limbs were; he kept tilting like he was going to fall against Armin’s shoulder, and his hands were moving as if he was tempted to start doggy-paddling.

            “Good, though? Good birthday…?” he asked.

            “I really couldn’t have asked for better. Sorry I fell asleep.” Eren snorted and ran a hand through his hair.

            “I thought I went first…I was going to ask if I snored, ha…”

            “I’ll let you know in the morning.”

            About halfway up the stairs Eren could feel himself trying to slip off into sleep again. Armin knew the house well enough that he hadn’t thought to turn on the lights, so Eren could hardly make out his form ahead of him on the stairs. He managed nonetheless to grab onto the hem of Armin’s shirt in an attempt to stay focused. Armin noticed, but only in the way you noticed that you were breathing or that a cloud had just passed over the sun. It didn't even cause him to glance around. 

            He was saying something, but Eren’s eyes kept closing, and attuned though he was to Armin’s voice, he wasn’t catching all the words. He noted with some surprise that they were standing in Armin’s room all of a sudden. He noted with _more_ surprise that the place was a mess of textbooks, university pamphlets, notebooks, and writing utensils. Armin was rummaging around on his dresser.

            “I think the dentist gave me one last time I was… Ah, here it is.” He held something out to Eren. When Eren’s fingers closed around it it crinkled; it was a toothbrush, still wrapped in plastic. “And I have some shirts that’re too big for me, if you want to change out of those clothes for now. I think grandpa thought I was going to end up taller than I did… I don’t think I have any pyjama bottoms that’d fit you, though. But you can just wear your boxers if you want. I don’t think it’ll be cold with both of us in there.”

            Eren had been scratching at his eyebrow for no particular reason, and continued to do so for a few moments before the implication processed.

            “Ah—Armin, I don’t have to sleep in your bed.”

            Armin was moving books and binders off of the blankets. “It’s fine. We used to do it all the time.”

            “Yeah, but…”

            “If you want to you can sleep on the floor, I guess. Or I can—”

            “I don’t want you to sleep on the floor!” Armin hesitated for a moment before setting aside the last of the books.

            “…Okay. What’s wrong?” He’d thought they were doing better today, but here they went again, sliding down some unexpected slope. If that was inevitable, Armin at least wanted to do it with his hand folded up in Eren’s.

            “Nothing! I just thought you might think it was weird. Or your grandpa might, if he saw. We’re not kids anymore.”

            “No. But you’re still Eren, aren’t you? And I’m still me. So it’s still fine.”  He could see it the moment Eren decided to keep something back. Armin decided not to push for it. Today was going so well; whatever Eren was holding onto, it could wait. “Grandpa really won’t mind. I won’t either. I promise. I’m going to go get changed.”

            “You’re…still in pyjamas.”

            “What?”

            Eren pointed; Armin looked. He had not gotten changed at any point.

            “Oh. That makes it easier then.”

            With only a little additional awkwardness about who was going to brush his teeth first (they did it simultaneously) and whether Eren should get changed in the bathroom (he did), they eventually managed to get beneath the blankets.

            “It’s been a while, huh?”, Eren said as he slid in after Armin. “Your bed’s smaller than I remember.”

            “You were just on it a few days ago.”

            “Not with you, though. I mean—! Me, you, and Mikasa all used to fit.”

            He was right that it was more difficult now; their knees kept bumping for the first few moments, and they couldn’t seem to sort out what to do with their arms until Armin gave up and let them rest on the mattress between his chest and Eren’s. Eren struggled with it a moment longer. As if to put off the decision he tapped Armin’s forehead and then his nose with one finger—another relic from kindergarten when Eren had been at a loss for how else to stop his friend from being upset, though then it had not just been a touch. One of his clearest early memories was the painful press of pebbles into his knees as he leaned forward to plant a sloppy five-year-old kiss to the nose of a teary, red-faced Armin.

            “I’m sorry I stopped,” he mumbled.

            “Stopped what?”

            “Kissing you. In first grade.”

            “Oh…” Honestly, Armin had never wondered about the reasoning. There had been a change; he’d accepted it.

            “I thought it’d be…better, or something…” Eren could hardly make out even the vague shape of Armin through the darkness and through the blur of his own eyelashes. He’d pulled his hands away from Armin and was plucking at the unfamiliar shirt he was wearing—it was soft, as was apparently everything Armin owned, and it smelled like Armin, and there was something important about all this that Eren couldn’t place right at the moment. “Remember how I had those pencils…?”

            “The cat ones?”

            “Yeah. And they were the coolest pencils in the world, right?”

            “Yeah.”

            “Well they all got snapped in half because I thought that. So I figured that the best way to get things broken or stolen was to show that I liked them. I mean. The teachers were already calling me ‘mother hen Jaeger,’ and I was pretty sure the other kids were more vicious the more obvious I was, so…clearly I couldn’t hide that I liked you, but I just…settled for punching them if they were mean, I…wasn’t, um…good…”

            “That’s…really terrible. I’m sorry—I didn’t know that.”

            “It was better once Mikasa showed up though.”

            “I’m surprised you’ll admit that…”

            “Anyway I’m sorry. I made things different. I screwed it up.”

            “No you didn’t. That’s such a small change, Eren… That was one year after we met, and we’ve known each other for thirteen. We’re still more than okay. I don’t know why you’re so apocalyptic all of a sudden.” Frankly, he was afraid he was rubbing off on his friend. Eren wasn’t afraid of acknowledging and shouting down the truly terrible, but he wasn’t generally so grimly pessimistic about things.

            “It’s because I’m…not smart enough, I…” Eren couldn’t summon the energy to do this right now. He never even managed to finish the sentence before sleep took him. He had wanted to stay awake longer so that he could see and hear and feel that Armin fell asleep just fine, and wasn’t in fact made up of calculations and anxiety, and was happy. He had _wanted_ the last words he spoke that day to be, ‘Happy birthday, Armin,’ because he’d neglected to say it outright before and felt it had to be spoken clearly aloud given Eren’s silence on a certain other important topic.     

            What he had not wanted was to cause Armin to frown a little and press his hands against Eren’s as if to check that he was real.

            “Eren, you’re doing so well, really…” But the levelled-out breathing told him Eren couldn’t hear. Eren’s relative reticence on Friday and his complete absence on Saturday had not gone unnoticed, and in light of that last statement Armin wondered whether Eren had spent all that time studying. That would be just like Eren—work until he was ready to pass out, and then stop by to try to make Armin’s birthday go well. He shouldn’t have had to scramble for marks like this. If Armin could get the Sina scholarship, Eren wouldn’t have to worry half so much.

            He tangled his fingers up with Eren’s and bumped their noses together and said, “Thank you, Eren.”

 _You’re working too hard_. _Alright. It’s alright. I can take on more myself. I can do better._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I changed the rating not because this is going into ~racy~ territory but because...I don't know. It just seemed like I should.


	6. Chapter 6

            Armin woke up by nearly rolling straight off the bed as Eren clambered over him and then stumbled out of the room. By the time Armin, with all four limbs cocooned in the blankets, did flop onto the floor, Eren had shut himself into the bathroom and was halfway into a full-blown coughing fit. Armin could honestly say he had never expected such cheap and flimsy sheets to be such an obstacle. By the time he wrestled his way free and ran to the bathroom Eren had turned on the water in the shower. Armin knocked on the door.

            “Eren—”

            “Sick,” Eren said.

            “Are you alright?”

            “Y-yeah, I’m just…” Armin couldn’t make out the rest over the sound of water.

            “Can I come in?”

            “No. I’ll get you too.”

            “You were in my bed while you were at your most contagious. I think it’s too late to worry about that.”

            “Ughh, alright…”

            Armin opened the door and found Eren draped over the side of the tub like a towel, letting curses drip between his teeth in a half-hearted way. Armin held his hand under the water; it was cold. If Eren felt overheated it meant his fever had reached its highest point, for the moment.

            “Oh…kay, it’s alright,” Armin said, rubbing Eren’s back with one hand, because there was really nothing much else he could do. “Is this what Mikasa has?”

            “Yeah, I…” His muscles spasmed beneath Armin’s hand, and Armin clung onto his shirt as if it was a matter of keeping Eren from tumbling overboard. The fabric was damp, and it wasn’t just with the shower water now flecking it. “Ffffffffffuck… Got to get home.”

            “Wouldn’t it be better to sleep it off? I don’t know if it’s a good idea to try to move far right now.”

            “’s’not far, though. I’ll make it fine.” He planted both hands on the side of the tub, and for a moment what with the corded muscles in his arms and the determined scowl on his face, he looked perfectly healthy and absolutely correct, if a bit damp and pallid. Then his hands slid out from under him. Armin caught him around the shoulders and kept his teeth from hitting the porcelain.

            “Eren, really—”

            “Dad…knows stuff, I’ll be alright…fevers aren’t that bad. I’m just a bit dizzy, is all.”

            It was the trip Armin was worried about more than anything. Lurching around past midnight with a teenager who couldn’t talk or walk straight was liable to get them taken in by the police. They patrolled all the neighbourhoods near the school in search of more or less anyone they could haul in for anything. A popular charge was ‘damage to police property,’ always levelled after the suspect’s face dented the hood of the car while they were being cuffed for no special reason. It had happened to Ymir twice because the police who hung around the high school at the bell to prevent fights didn’t happen to like the look of her. Once, they’d taken Historia in too—they _had_ liked her face, up until she’d seen them arresting her girlfriend and a steady stream of obscenities had issued from it.

            Armin briefly entertained the idea of calling Carla to come pick Eren up, but it was probably two in the morning, and she had a long commute to work to think of.

            “Okay,” he said. “Can you walk?”

            Eren nodded and pushed his hand through his hair, which was soaked now from the shower and stood up in ridiculous little spikes. When he looked up at Armin he gave a huff of laughter.

            “Some birthday present, eh?” It had been a long time since Armin had seen his expression so watery and bloodshot. His immediate instinct was to bundle him with blankets, settle him somewhere soft, and surround him with the sort of home-cooked food he had no chance of producing.

            “I think you’re in the clear,” he said as that hallucination dispersed in a cloud of awkward disappointment. “It’s November fourth by now.”

            “Still.”

            “Don’t worry about it.”

            They hobbled down the stairs with little incident and got clear of the living room without waking Armin’s grandfather. If he was home it must have been nearer to three than two in the morning. It wasn’t until Eren was sitting on the steps to the back door fumbling his way into his shoes and Armin was stuffing the hems of his pyjama bottoms into his boots that he realized the problem.

            “Your jeans are still upstairs.”

            “S’fine,” Eren said.

            “You’re going to be running around in November in your underwear.”

            “Cold’d be nice right now, honestly. I’m really, aughhhh…”

            “Are you sure you’re okay? You really can stay here.”

            “No point getting you and your grandpa sick.” He rubbed his eyes. “I don’t wanna be responsible for infecting sweater deer and old man…”

_Sweater deer…? Are you maybe slightly delusional?_

            If he was, that really just meant Armin should get him to Grisha all the quicker. It was only two blocks; Armin was sure he could get him there. He crouched, hauled Eren’s arm over his shoulder, and then set off.

            “Wow,” Eren said once they’d made it off the walkway and had met the sidewalk. “Wow, it’s really fucking cold.” The streetlight offered only this strange blunt illumination, orangeish and stark. Without a healthy layer of snow on the ground, this made the cold seem unseasonable.

            Armin bit his lip and did not comment, both because he felt an ‘I told you so’ was neither tactful nor useful when directed at someone running a high fever, and because—it was _such_ a high fever. He felt like he had a space heater strapped to his side rather than his best friend.

            _How did I manage to not notice that he was burning up like this? It should’ve woken me up…_

            A police car slunk past, and in his peripheral vision Armin made out the pale smudge of an officer’s face tilted towards the passenger window. Honestly, he couldn’t blame them—Eren could barely keep his feet under him, he couldn’t keep his face up, and he was wearing a coat and boxer shorts. If ever a scene deserved to be squinted at, it was this one.

            “Oookayy, no,” Armin said when the cruiser turned the nearest corner. The officers were going around the block and were going to stop him and Eren the second time around. He dragged Eren across the pitted expanse of frozen mud his neighbour called a yard.

            “Where’re we…?”

            “Just a minor adventure,” Armin said. “Better than making the major one.” He really did not want to find out what the drunk tank looked like, especially while Eren was in his underwear.

            “Okay,” Eren said, and let his head flop against Armin’s shoulder. His feet were starting to drag behind him.

            “This is a really bad moment to fall asleep…”

            “Right, right, I won’t.”

            They were nearing his neighbour’s fence, which on this side was a surface of sheer wooden planks.

            “Can you climb over it?”, Armin asked.

            “Yeah, definitely.” While Eren reached up to get a grip on the top of the fence, Armin crouched and made a lattice with his fingers. Normally Eren wouldn’t have needed it, but Armin wasn’t sure he was positive where his feet were.

            Eren confirmed this by pressing his shoe first against Armin’s head. It slipped off quickly, spreading Armin’s hair across his face in a damp, slightly muddy mess. Armin’s expression didn’t change, but he did give a slow blink and exhale sharply through his nose.

            “Fucking—sorry Armin—”

            “It doesn’t matter, just hurry—”

            Eren’s foot found Armin’s hands, and as Armin stood up he tipped his friend over the fence. Eren landed with a rustle and a scattering of obscenities, but there wasn’t time to worry about the possibility that he was about to launch himself headfirst into a thornbush. The police cruiser’s headlights were panelling the houses in gold. Armin found a sloppy hold on top of the fence, flailed for a moment like a fish on a hook, and then kicked and writhed his way over the fence. By sheer good luck he did not plant an elbow in the gut of an ailing Eren, though he did find himself suspended in the branches of some unknown but extremely pointy and ice-gilded shrubbery. Eren had already rolled onto the pavement and was picking himself up.

            “I don’t think they saw me,” Armin whispered as he stumbled free. One of the neighbours’ windows was just above him. It was just an old lady who lived there, nobody at all threatening, but all the same he didn’t want to raise a racket.

            “Who?”, Eren asked, looking around as if the pursuing party had followed Armin over the fence.

            “There’s a police car.”

            Another daffy smile from Eren. They should not have been so endearing, and they certainly should not have made Armin’s pulse speed up. The boy was sick—he’d probably just lost all control of his expressions.  

            “Ahh, Armin you’re a criminal. I’ll tell everyone how cool you are…renegade student Armin Arlert…”

            Armin laughed and had to cover his mouth. A glance up at the window showed that it continued to be unlit, but he shouldn’t take chances. “Okay, let’s get going—” He took Eren’s hand and again led the way. Four fences, seventeen unforeseen slush puddles, three flower gardens, and one tiny treacherous dog yapping at a window later, and they were almost clear. All they had to do now was extract themselves from some unfortunate family’s flower bed and make it across the street. From there on it was a simple dash around the corner and straight up the street to Eren’s house. They were hunkered down for the moment, belly-down on the cold dirt and propped up on their elbows.

            “What d’you think?”, Eren said.

            “There’s no reason they’d have to still be looking for us. I mean…they must’ve been around the block a few times already anyway, right? And we’re a block away.”

            “We should sprint for it then.” The streetlight here was burnt out, so Eren couldn’t see how far Armin’s eyebrows climbed on his forehead.

            “Can you run right now?”

            “Mm. Yeah. Feeling better out in the cold, honestly.”

            “Are you _sure?_ The ground’s hard. If you fall it’ll hurt…” Eren hissed dismissively. “Well, as long as your positive.” Armin placed his hands more firmly on the dirt to give him better traction. “On three, then?”

            “Yeah.”

            “One, two, thr—” He lost the vowels to the push of air as he launched himself forward. He was surprised at how fast his legs could still carry him without getting that elastic tension stretching from hip to knee or knee to ankle. Even though his feet couldn’t seem to conform quite right to the shape of the ground, and his boots were cumbersome compared to the runners and cleats he was used to, just to have the air moving so sharply through his lungs and his blood pumping so strongly through his limbs made everything seem so much clearer and more sharply-defined.

            It was short-lived. The traditional footsteps rushing past him were conspicuously absent. When a glance to the side didn’t show Eren, he twisted around more fully and found his best friend sprawled face-down halfway out of the garden. Armin couldn't see it, of course, but Eren had caught his foot in the small wire loops that marked out the edge of the garden. 

            Armin didn’t even get as far as calling his name inquisitively before his ankle twisted on a patch of earth and he took a dive dirtward.

            “Wlah!”

            He hardly had his face pressed to the turf for five seconds before Eren ran past—no, _over_ him—across the boulevard, and onto the asphalt of the road. At just the same moment a car turned a distant corner. Eren was on the far side of the road, pounding along the sidewalk, before he called back.  

            “Run, Armin!”

            “That isn’t a cruiser—”

            “It could be!”

            “It’s _not_ —”

            Eren was just passing through a streetlight’s cone of light, so Armin could quite clearly see him throw his head back ridiculously.

            “ _Ruuuuuun!_ ”

            Armin’s muscles were hauling him onward again before he’d made any conscious decision about it. He’d forgotten entirely how fun it could be—it—this—running for the hell of it from an imaginary police car, from the other team’s forwards, from whoever was it in a game of tag. Eren had always made himself some sort of unofficial field marshal in tag, manhunt, any of those games—always ‘Armin let’s split up!’, ‘Mikasa go right!’, ‘No no go LEFT _I MEANT LEFT!_ ’, like it was his personal duty to get all three of them through.

            Windows were lighting up gold and curtains were being drawn back and Armin simply didn’t care, because there was pavement thudding beneath his boots and a shrinking distance between him and Eren. The half block to the Jaeger household was crossed in what felt like only a few breaths. Eren had been losing speed, and Armin caught up with him at just the moment he turned around after reaching the doorstep. Armin collided with Eren, who hit the door and slid down it so that they were a heap of tired teenagers on the doorstep. It had been one part Armin’s miscalculation about the distance, and one part Armin’s desire to be close again, like they’d been in in his bed.

            “Oof—yeah, just stick your face right in the plague-carrier’s coat, there’s a good idea. I see why they give you the big scholarships.” Eren brought his arms up, one under each of Armin’s, and pressed his hands to his nose. He was trying to laugh but sounded a bit like he was making the attempt from underwater. It was an ugly plugged-up sound, and Armin could not name a noise he liked better. He squeezed his eyes shut and nuzzled his head against Eren’s chest. He thought, _Your coat’s not buttoned up, and this is my shirt anyway_ , but the words never made it to his mouth, so Eren carried on. “It’s fucking gross, oh god, so much phlegm, pfaahaaha… On the upside, it could buy you a couple more days to study for English.”

            “I don’t think so. You seem fine.”

            “It hasn’t really started to hit me yet.” He sniffed again, heroically. “If it can knock Mikasa off her feet, I’m screwed.”

            Armin inhaled deeply before lifting his face a little from the folds of Eren’s coat. He scrunched up his nose for a moment—Eren smelled like sweat—and said, “I don’t know. She’s been skipping lunches lately, and she looks like she’s been losing sleep; her immune system might not be quite up to normal.”

            “Oh yeah. Why is that…?”

            “Well the immune system is a delicate—that is probably not what you’re asking at all.”

            “I mean why’s she skipping lunch,” Eren said. It sounded like he was going to need to sniff again soon or risk dripping on Armin.

            “I’m not sure.” Technically it was true. He had a strong _hypothesis_ grounded in Mikasa’s sudden interest in Armin’s physics class next term and her questions lately about the more distant universities. Annie was the only person Armin knew who was signed up for fourth year physics, and she had told him the week before that she was looking at schools as far away from this city as she could get. Annie had been noticeably absent during lunch hours as well—noticeable because it meant Reiner turned his benignly antagonistic tendencies to others who sat at the same table. Maybe Annie and Mikasa were both coincidentally spending a lot of time in the library; maybe one or the other was seeking extra help (though chances of that were slim, given the apathy of virtually all of the teachers); but the obvious answer was that they had found some good, quiet spot in the school which was clear of teachers and lurking freshmen. If Armin knew of a few such locations without ever having need of a private corner to talk or argue or kiss, surely Annie knew more.

            Even if Armin had known this for certain, however, he didn’t see how it was his place to divulge details of Mikasa’s personal life to anyone who asked. That went also, if not especially, for her adopted brother.

            “Brhglg. Ffuck. Okay.” Eren again moved an arm over Armin’s head so he could wipe his nose. “You can get back if you want. I should—”, another enormous sniff, “I should get to sleep, I’m…kinda dead. If you wind up missing class too you could come over. I mean we won’t be able to get each other any _more_ sick, and it’s more fun if we’re all there.”

            “I’ve got a test. I’ll be alright—grandpa cooks good meals, so I should be fine.” _Admittedly I haven’t been sleeping as much as I should…_  But if Eren could run around like a sugar-fuelled fourth-grader there was no reason why Armin couldn’t sit through a seventy-five minute test. Armin wriggled his hands out from behind Eren’s back and got to his feet. “Let me know tomorrow how you and Mikasa are.”

            “Yeah.” Eren rolled over, took hold of the doorknob, and pulled himself up to a kneel. “I’ll text you after cl…”  He was patting the side of his leg. “Fuck.”

            Ah. Of course. No jeans, no pockets, no keys. Armin’s hand went vainly to his own hip, but of course there was no phone to be found; just fleecy flannel. He managed to catch Eren’s wrist before the other boy could bring his fist against the door.

            “You’ll wake your parents up,” Armin said. He did not want to have to explain to Carla why he was depositing her son on the doorstep in his boxers, covered in dirt, looking like he’d been crying. Potentially worse was the look of flat, unsurprised acceptance Grisha would give him. “Mikasa’s window is still over the garage, right?”

            “Yeah. You’re right. I’ll just climb in—”

            “No, no—you’ll break your neck. I’ll just go ask her to let you in.”

            “Do you remember how?”

            Armin squinted at him.

            “Who do you think you’re talking to? Remembering how’s not going to be the problem.”

            Eren snorted and tipped back against the door once more while Armin hopped over the narrow strip of lawn between the door and the driveway. The garage was an easy enough beast to tackle, or it had been when he’d been in elementary school. As Armin pulled himself up onto the chain link fence and it gave a disheartening wobble, he had to concede that he had grown since then. _A lot of it’s muscle, though. Come on. I’m stronger than I was then. This is easy._

            Certainly he was taller than he’d been. Leaning across to the garage roof had lost a lot of its swaying terror now that he could do it in one easy motion. The shingles still gave him trouble—rough yet difficult to get a grip on—but with longer legs and stronger arms it was easier to spider his way up there. From there all he had to do was walk along the length of the roof to the wall of the house; towards the back, a dark square marked out Mikasa’s window. There was a gap of about two feet between the garage roof and the wall of the house, again less daunting now that Armin had a few more inches in height. He simply leaned across, rested his elbows on the windowsill, and tapped the pads of his fingers lightly on the cold glass. Mikasa slept light; he shouldn’t have to rouse the whole household to get her attention.

            “Mikasa…Mikasa…! Eren’s locked out—”

            A light snapped on, and Armin instinctively ducked. It was one thing to whisper at a darkened window, but he didn’t want to peer into her bedroom like a pervert. He hurried back along the roof and then dropped down onto the driveway.

            “I think she’s coming,” he said.

            “Good.” Eren’s whole voice sounded damp.

            “If she’s not here within a few minutes we’ll go back to my house. I don’t think it’s good for you to be out in the cold like this.” Eren shrugged.

            “Hey, Armin, I…uh, I…miss you, I think…”

            The fever must have been getting to him again. His voice was thick and wobbly and vulnerable; if Eren hadn’t been so obviously sick, Armin would have found it truly alarming.

            “I haven’t gone anywhere, though,” he said. Reassuring wasn’t something he was all that good at, but he could offer at least the comfort of fact. They lived two blocks from one another and always had, they had three classes together this semester and three the next, and they were going to apply to the same schools. ‘Together’ was something he could always give to Eren, even if it was all he could give.  

            Since Mikasa was presumably as hazy as Eren if not more so, Armin expected they would have to spend a fair bit of quality time with the stoop. Before he’d even made it over there to six next to Eren the door swung open to reveal Mikasa, or a static-laced cloud of woolly blankets and messy hair with Mikasa’s face. A hand shot out from the blanket, grabbed Eren’s wrist, and dragged him inside.

            “Sorry. We’re contagious,” she said, and shut the door without further ceremony.

 

 

            Inside, Eren had lost all semblance of energy after he’d shrugged out of his coat and pulled off his shoes. He was sitting now on the doormat. He had pulled up the collar of his shirt over his nose and was staring off into space .

            “You’re being ridiculous,” Mikasa said. “You should have called Carla. She would have picked you up.”

            “But we had an adventure.” Eren’s voice was muffled against the cotton.

            “Where are your pants?”

            “Armin has them. And I have his shirt. And he let me sleep in his bed and it didn’t matter, it wasn’t important, it was…so important…” He tipped over sideways and inhaled deeply, or tried to, but his nose was stuffed completely. For all the chills and the sweating and the suspicion that he was coated in ooze, he felt like he was floating.

            “If all you could think to give him for his birthday was sex, you should be embarrassed. Especially since now you’ve probably gotten him sick.” She adjusted the blanket around her shoulders and tried not to shiver. She would not crawled out of her bed for anyone short of Eren. The fuzziness of her fever had mostly passed, so her bad mood was much more concentrated and focused than it might have been.

            “I…what? No, it wasn’t like that. We watched movies.” He rolled over onto his stomach. “I feel so gross, though…”

            “You need to get to bed.” She pulled him upright with ease even in her sickly state. When he swayed on the spot she considered this for a moment in expressionless silence before pulling one of the blankets from around her shoulders and drawing it around his. “There. Now go to sleep.”

            “Yeah.”

            She guided him along by his wrist. She could have been convinced that he was sleepwalking until she pushed him gently past the door to his room, at which point he stumbled a step and then fell still. 

            “It was different though,” he said. “That’s the thing—it was different. So much that I felt it.” His brow had furrowed, and he looked more like he did while he was healthy. “Which means it’s changed so that…normal doesn’t feel like normal, right…? Fuck that. I want it back.”

            “I think your brain is cooking. You should sleep.”

            “Did it get better by morning, for you?”

            “No. It got much worse. Sleep anyway.”

 

 

 

            A text at six thirty woke Armin up. He’d been expecting it, but all the same he checked to be sure. The sender was Mikasa:

 

**Not making the test. Eren’s sick too. Good luck.**

            Preparation for sleep had meant scrubbing his hands thoroughly, throwing everything he’d been wearing and all of Eren’s clothes in the washing machine, scrubbing his hands thoroughly again, and then bundling himself up in his bed, with care that his feet didn’t poke out. When he woke up sniffly and red beneath the nose with a five-pin bowling ball where his frontal lobe should have been, he pulled out his most comfortable clothes then marched off to throw himself into the shower. Breakfast was oranges and orange-juice. He was fairly sure that was just some nonsense factoid he’d heard on television once as an aid against sickness in general. Probably it would do nothing, but he couldn’t have cereal anyway without producing more phlegm than he would know what to do with.

            “You’re looking a little grim,” his grandfather said as Armin abandoned the kitchen table and made for the basement doorway. “Pale, too. I can call the school for you.”

            “Thank you, but I’m really fine—!”

            He emerged from the dusty depths of the house a few minutes later in full battle armour: his winter coat, a paper hygienic mask from a kit his grandpa’s school had provided him during one of the major health scares, and lime green dishwashing gloves. The gloves, he felt, were a bit much. He’d been hoping for the plain rubber sort the school always provided when they were assigned to litter-gathering duty, but there hadn’t seemed to be any.

            Armin’s grandfather blinked once as if it was a trick of the light, looked a moment longer to be sure that it wasn’t, and then turned back to his toast.

            “Have fun at school. Call me if you need me to talk to the vice principal.”

            “I will!”

            Armin didn’t bother picking up his backpack. All he would need today were the pens Mikasa had given him for his birthday, which he grabbed on his way to the door and stuffed in his coat pocket. He’d made a calculation and decided it was better to miss three of his classes today and use the time to sleep. He was certain that he _could_ force his achey body and soupy brain through five more hours of schooling, but the most he would accomplish was to infect his peers and deprive himself of recovery time. If he slept as much as he could today, maybe he could be in class tomorrow, rather than dragging this out through the whole week. 

            He was grateful that he lived so close to the school. He would not have wanted to face down a bus full of students dressed like this, and if he was crammed onto a seat with one or two other people odds were he’d get them sick anyway.

            He was halfway up the school drive before anyone said anything directly to him about it.

            “You should have your escort with you if you’re going around dressed like that.”

            Annie had fallen into step beside him. She had her hands hidden in the central pocket of her sweatshirt, as always—she could rarely be found in a coat until winter was at its most bitter. She kept her gaze trained forward, as if she was walking with Armin purely by coincidence.

            “I’m fine,” Armin said. A few people were giggling at him, but if they had any comments to make they waited until he was past. He was doing a good job of not actually caring all that much. Most of the guilty parties were in ninth grade, and he was honestly past the point of being worried about what they thought of him. “They couldn’t make it to class today.”

            “Mikasa’s sick, then.” Armin nodded; Annie snorted quietly.

            “Grand gestures are dangerous, apparently… Infectious, too.”

            “What do you mean?”

            Annie shook her head.

            “Come with me to my locker.”

            Such invitations were unheard of, but Armin’s brain seemed to be growing moss and he just couldn’t summon up the energy to question her. He seemed to remember Reiner and Bertl hanging around near his English classroom, so he suspected Annie's locker was more or less on his route anyway. He was glad for the company, given that when he walked into the school there was as always a crowd of ninth and tenth graders clogging the hallway. The clusters had a way of dissolving when Annie needed to make a path for herself. People didn’t have to see her play to know that she was a force to be feared.

            “Here.”

            “Hm?”

            “Armin, stop.” He’d continued drifting along after she’d stopped at her locker—his feet automatically following the route to his English class.

            “Oh,” he said, blinking. “Sorry. What was it you…?”

            She twisted in her combination, opened the metal door, and then pulled from her locker a black and white polka-dot umbrella, which Armin stared at uncomprehendingly.  

            “It’s Mikasa’s,” Annie said.

            “Ah.”

            “I’ve had it for a while. Could you give it back?”

            “Oh—yes, it’s no problem. I’m probably going to see them after class today anyway.”

            She pushed it into his hands just as the warning bell rang. The flow of students through the hall became stronger; Armin let himself be bumped and jostled along until he coasted through the open doorway of his English classroom.

            “You’re taking this test more seriously than usual,” Reiner said the moment Armin stepped inside. “I feel underprepared now.”

            Armin moved a lime-green hand vaguely. It could have been either a wave of greeting or a dismissal of the joke.

            “I’m contagious,” he said as he collapsed into his chair near the front of the class and leaned the umbrella against it. He had a newfound respect for Eren for being able to run while in this state; his wrists and ankles felt weighted.   

            “That would’ve been a good excuse to stay home. You can always just do a makeup test.”

            “I don’t know if I can. That would mean Mr. Shaw missed his lunch break.” Their teacher wasn’t at his desk yet, and wouldn’t be until about two minutes after the bell. When the period ended he would leap out of class at a pace that would impress an Olympic hurdler. He appeared to have some kind of deadly allergy to his students.

            “I’d skip your other classes,” Annie said. Armin started; he hadn’t realized she’d come into the classroom with him. She wasn’t in their English class, but she was sitting now on Reiner’s desk as if it were a daily tradition.  

            “It’s just you in the computer lab, so it might be a nightmare,” Reiner said, nodding. “Wait—in that case you could go lick all the keyboards.”

            “Gross…”, Armin said. “They’re really dirty.”

            Reiner clapped Armin’s shoulder and nearly slammed the smaller boy’s face onto the desk.

            “We’ve gotten to him, Annie. His first thought’s not about the moral implications of spreading disease to his classmates.”

            “His get-up says differently.”

            She slid off the desk and stretched on her way to the door—not like she was tired, but more like she was getting ready to run a race.

            “You could pick up the pace a bit,” Reiner called after her. “You’re never going to make it to the science wing on time.”

            “Why would I be going to the science wing?”

            She disappeared through the doorway as the bell rang.  

            “Kids these days and their sports scholarships,” Reiner said with an exaggerated shake of his head. "Making the whole girls' team into lazy irresponsible students." 

            “I really think you’ll be offered some if Annie is.”

            “That’s if anyone turns up to actually scout our team. We’re not as strong as the girls, on the whole, so they’ll probably pass us over.”

            “Maybe not if they’re in town anyway…?”

            “Arlert, is there a gas attack I should know about?”, Mr. Shaw asked as he entered the room with a stack of test papers under one arm. This greeting prompted a few snickers from the corners of the classroom.

            “He’s trying not to get the whole class sick,” Reiner said. “I wouldn’t screw with him—if he takes off that mask he’ll unleash hell.” The teacher eyed Reiner in a sideways, uneasy way.

            “Right,” he said, sliding around the rows and putting a test on each desk. “Okay, phones off and get all your crap off your desks. If I catch you cheating it’s an instant zero, and…blah blah blah, you all already know this. Just write the test.”

            About halfway through the period Armin caught himself staring listlessly into space thinking about nothing besides the buzzing in his head. He really should have been writing about the linguistic and figurative nuances of a passage from act five of _The Tempest_. At least it was a passage he’d practiced while studying with Mikasa. Once he jolted himself into action, breaking the speech down was more a task of muscle memory than of summoning up new thoughts on Early Modern literature. At least, he hoped it was. He wasn’t in a fit state to go over his answers and make sure they were coherent. When Shaw declared the test finished (before the bell, so he could make his timely escape), Armin was still trying to cram a few words into the last square centimetre of space on the page. There wasn’t any use trying to hang onto it and fix anything. Better to let it go.

            _Wait, though...what about_ _Mikasa?_

            Armin turned to try to address his teacher, but it was too late. Shaw flitted away after collecting the last of the papers, and there was no hope of catching up. Armin needed to talk to him to be sure that Mikasa would get a chance to do a makeup test, but there was a better way. Every day after homeroom Shaw went to the vending machines near the gym before visiting the office on the third floor, where one of his friends worked.

            Beating him there was not a challenge even on a day like this. Armin didn’t hurry unduly and still wound up leaning against the wall just outside the office doors well before the bell rang to signal the start of the second block of classes. He tipped his head back against the wall, shut his eyes, and was about halfway to falling asleep standing up when the elevator—the doors of which were just to his right—dinged. Armin opened his eyes just in time to see Jean and Marco step out of it. He didn’t even really register that they were looking at him with disconcertion; he blinked sleepily and said, “Oh, hi. Do you usually take the elevator?”

            “This asshole wouldn’t let me carry him up the stairs,” Jean said, tilting his head towards Marco. “It would’ve been all heroic and everything.”

            “If I can manage bleachers I think I can handle stairs,” Marco said.

            “Tell it to my porch steps.”

            “That was a fluke.”

            “I just don’t see the point in you getting a broken nose to match your busted leg.” He looked again at Armin. “Speaking of that, you look like hell. Somebody punch you?”

            “No.”

            “Are you sick?”, Marco said. “You don’t have to be afraid to talk to the office ladies—they’ll take one look you at and beg you to get out of school before you infect them.”

            “I’m waiting for Shaw. Actually, though…Jean, do you think I could get a copy of your notes?”

            “Which ones do you need?”

            “All of them for today, and maybe tomorrow…I can just photocopy them, so I’ll get them right back to you.”

            “Shit. Are you terminal?”

            “It’s just a flu.”

            “A flu that keeps Armin Arlert away from chemistry class is a flu not to be fucked with. I’ll get you the notes, yeah.”

            “Do you want bio too?”, Marco asked.

            “That’d be great.”

            “You had a shift today, didn’t you?”, Jean said. “Have you already called in?”

            “Not yet.”

            “They’re going to rip you to shreds. How long were you supposed to be in for?”

            “Until close.” Jean deliberated for a moment. 

            “I’ve got the same shift tomorrow. We can swap, if you think you’ll be up for it by then.”

            Armin blinked, half-expecting that he’d actually fallen asleep there and this was a too-pleasant, too-convenient dream. Jean and Marco both still stood solid before him with expectant expressions when he opened his eyes again,

            “Are you sure?” 

            “Doesn’t hurt me any. Working on a Monday’s the same as working on a Tuesday. Besides, you swapped with me for the game, so I owe you.”

            “Ah…" It seemed for some reason like the greatest act of kindness ever bestowed upon him, and Armin was having trouble settling on an appropriate expression of gratitude. His more rational side, somewhat hazy through the illness, confirmed his suspicion that Eren's bizarre state of happiness the night before had been fever-induced. If Armin was honest with himself, the slight sag in his shoulders as this occurred to him was not exhaustion but disappointment. "You guys should get to class. Just…thanks, Jean, really...”

            Jean snorted and ruffled up Armin’s hair.

            “Well you try not to die. You’re supposed to cure cancer or something when you grow up.”

            “I’ll try. Please wash your hands.”

            When Jean strode off for class he did so alone; Marco remained where he was.

            “I actually have to talk to them,” he said. The hallways were nearly empty by now, but he had the excuse of his injury if he was late. “I’m going to be missing all next week.”

            “Why?”

            “My parents are dragging me out for some campus tours.”

            “Already? Have you narrowed down your choices that soon?” It made Armin feel all the more hopelessly inadequate if other people were already so far advanced in their plans. He was still looking at upwards of five schools, and he had no idea yet as to his program.

            Marco nodded.

            “There’re only two, but they’re both out of province.”

            “Oh.”

            That earned him a good-natured laugh.

            “It’s better than what Jean said, anyway. He was furious. I mean—I’m not sorry I told him. At the very least it got him to finally ask me out, so…”

            “Is that why—” Armin reconsidered. It wasn’t his business.

            “Why what?” Marco’s expression remained open and affable enough that Armin felt he could continue safely. Marco wasn’t prone to snapping a people. If Armin was too nosy he would just redirect the conversation.

            “Normally when you give people flowers they’re not in a pot, but cut flowers don’t last so long,” Armin said. Red filled Marco’s cheeks, eclipsing most of his freckles. He scratched at his nose as if hoping to distract from this.  

            “Ah—yeah, that’s…more or less what I was thinking. Even if we don’t keep dating we’ll still be friends, so I thought it would be alright to give him something a bit longer-term. And at least this way he might not be so…”

            “Lonely?”

            “Yeah. I know they’re just flowers, but he gets protective, and they’re something to take care of.” He straightened suddenly. “Oh—target sighted.” Shaw had just turned the corner. Marco put a hand briefly on Armin’s shoulder, smiled encouragingly, and then rearranged his crutches and set off.

            It was just Shaw and Armin in the hallway now. Armin’s knees were shaking, which was absurd. He decided to write it off as a chill even though it happened any time he had to talk to an authority figure. The whole point in dragging his sorry frame to school today had been to avoid exactly this situation. Most of the teachers here were at best ambivalent about the students, and at worst downright disdainful. Armin didn't have Reiner's bulk or Mikasa's flintiness or Eren's downright unabashed anger to get him through confrontations like this.

            _But I have the highest grades in the school. Just go._ Just as he was about to step away from the wall he caught sight of one of his own hands in his peripheral vision—glaringly green and embarrassing—remembered the quip at the start of the test—

            No. There was a more important sight quite literally at hand. He still held one of the pens Mikasa had given him. Mikasa may not have needed her marks in the same way Armin and Eren did, but accepting a zero on a test, or even a reduction for lateness, would still hurt her chances. 

            _Really now. It’s only Shaw. I was running from the police not five hours ago._   

             He clenched the pen in one fist and the umbrella in the other and forced himself into his teacher's path. 

 

 

            Mikasa and Eren were sharing the couch. They had nearly come to blows in their fight for dominance of the thing, but when Carla had dropped half a dozen blankets on them the task of swimming through the fleecy depths had become more important to survival. After that they’d been too exhausted to continue. Mikasa had her head tipped back over one armrest, and Eren had his cheek squashed against the other. The television was on, but neither one of them was sure who had made it so, or which of them had the remote. It was probably lost in the sea of legs and blankets and tissues that formed the entire middle portion of the couch. Since Grisha had essentially prescribed them a diet of fluids, there were frequent small-scale battles against one another and the blankets when one of them had to squirm out and make for the bathroom.

            “Eren, your phone,” Mikasa said.

            “My what?”, Eren croaked.

            “Your _phone_.”

            "It's at Armin's."

            "It's  _not_." 

            Oh. That was right. Armin's grandfather had found it on the couch in the morning and had brought it by. 

            That said, Eren had no memory of where the thing had went, and nothing was less appealing than moving. He flapped around with his hands until one of them caught on a particularly familiar smooth plastic shape. It was promptly sent flying out from under the blanket and into one of the mugs sitting in front of the couch.

            “For fuck’s sake…” He fished it out of the happily empty mug.

 

**Are you feeling ok enough for me to come over?**

 

            For a moment he couldn’t remember how to tell who had addressed the message. When he found Armin’s name at the top of the screen Eren sat up straight for all of two seconds before the weight just behind his forehead dragged him down against the armrest with a thump.  

 

**Oh**

**Oh it was me I knew it im contagious omg noo armin**

**Sorry**

**Rly sorry about this**

**Fuck**

**Fcuking**

**I cant even help ughh im so sorry**

**Is your grandpa making u soup or smth pls tlel me hes home to look after u bcs this is rough**

**Youll get over it quick though your like superhuman ull be back in class by 2moro morning 8 sharp all sparkly and evrything**

**That…wasn’t the question. I’m actually alright. It’s not hitting me that hard—my fever already broke and it’s not that high. I’m just…not going to be in class for the rest of the day, but I think I’ll be fine to go tomorrow. I still have your clothes and your class work, though. Also your keys and your wallet. Jean and Marco are going to get me the notes for bio, chem, and math, so I’ll email those to you too—or I can print them. Whichever’s better.**

 

            Eren made a long, distressed honking sound.

            “Why…? What’s happening?”, Mikasa asked without lifting her head. All she wanted to do was watch the cartoon children fight the cartoon villains with their cartoon swords and friendship. She wasn’t even sure what show this was, but the candy-glossy colours were entertaining enough on their own, for the moment.

            “Armin’s terrible.”

            “In what way.”

            “’cause he’s wonderful. I can’t take this.” He threw his phone again only to remember a moment later that he hadn’t responded yet. He reached for it but succeeded only in knocking over one of the mugs. “Can you text him back for me?”

            “You could have done it yourself.”

            “It’s out of reach now.” Mikasa sighed.

            “What do I say?”

            “That hell yes he can come over.”  

           

            Getting to the Jaegers’ house seemed to take four times as long today, even given the relative lack of obstacles in Armin’s path. He found the door unlocked, which was just as well given that Eren and Mikasa both still on the couch, and both quite ill-disposed to have answered if he’d knocked. Eren had sunk beneath the blankets completely; the only signs he was there at all were the lumpy form and the raspy sound of breathing.

            Mikasa was staring with half-lidded eyes at the television until she saw Armin.

            “I brought the things Eren left at my house,” Armin said as he set a bag beside the couch. He was free now of his mask and gloves, but no less tired than he’d been at school. “I talked to Shaw, too… You’re going to be allowed to write the test. It’ll be at lunch on whatever day you make it back. Just tell him at the start of first period and he says he’ll set it up.”

            “How was it…?”

            Armin shrugged.

            “I really don’t remember it, so I guess I’ll find out when he hands it back. It wasn’t anything unexpected, though. You’ll be fine.” She nodded and mumbled something that sounded like ‘thank you.’ It was discomfiting to see Mikasa so lethargic. She was a fairly still person generally, but she usually gave the sense that she could spring into motion if she needed to. Now she seemed to have fused to the couch. “Oh, and Annie was looking for you. She asked me to bring you your umbrella back. I forgot it at my house, but I’ll get it to you soon.” Mikasa’s eyes widened for a moment and then shifted again to the television as if she hadn’t heard. It was difficult to say whether she was blushing, given that her face was so blotchy already from the fever.

            “She didn’t text me,” she said.

            “She might still. I should…” He yawned against his sleeve. “I should get back.”

            “Wait. Eren wanted to—talk to you, or something. He didn’t say.”

            “He sounds like he’s asleep. He’ll get over it easier the more he rests. I’ve really got to do the same. Will you two be in class tomorrow?”

            Mikasa shrugged.

            “It doesn’t feel like it. We’ll see.”

            “Alright. Don’t worry—I’ll be extra careful with my notes so when we go over them they make sense to you. You’ll both catch up in no time.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been sick and also studying for finals so I've kind of lost all control of this...? Forgive me if it's a bit loopy.  
> Also please note that I in no way condone running around in your underwear while you're sick. That is a good way of getting sicker, or at least colder.


	7. Chapter 7

            Good luck wasn’t something Armin had ever had that much experience with. Things went wrong, or they worked out, and he’d never really thought to apply some sort of overarching system to it. When he was able to return to school on Tuesday, however—tired and runny-nosed but entirely free of his fever—he acknowledged that this was almost improbably fortunate. Mikasa and Eren were still off their feet, and they’d always had much stronger constitutions than he did. He thought it meant things were actually going well.

            He revised that opinion when his friends were not back in class by Wednesday, or Thursday—when even Friday slipped past without the normal knock on the door at seven thirty. By that point they’d missed at least a third of a unit in any given class—particularly worrying in Eren’s case since they had a chemistry test the following Thursday, and the material was difficult. Catching him up was going to be a struggle. Armin honestly wasn’t confident he had the teaching skill to manage it—one or two days, certainly, but when Eren had missed almost the entire conclusion to the unit and a few of the fundamental intermediary steps, Armin didn’t know if he could manage it. Typically Eren got the basics down on his own and Armin was responsible only for conveying the finer points and the tricky bits.

            He was brooding on this as he walked home on Friday. One thumb was still stuck beneath the strap of his backpack from when he’d tried to adjust the weight of it and gotten distracted by his own thought process. The only reason he remedied this at all before he actually reached his living room was that as he approached his house, the front door didn’t look quite the same in his peripheral vision as normal. When he looked up the fuzzy familiar shape became Annie, leaning against the doorframe and looking out at the world as flatly as if this was the vantage point from which she viewed it every day.

            “Oh—” Armin said, and couldn’t think of a follow-up. Either Annie had run here or she had skipped her last class, but either way he could not imagine why visiting his house would have merited such urgency.

            “Do you think those masks actually help?”, she asked. It was as if she’d started the conversation before he’d arrived.  

            “Masks?”

            “Like the one you wore on Monday.”

            “I don’t know. My grandpa had them because the university thought so, or said they did…” She frowned slightly and considered this in silence.

            “Do you have any more?”

            “Ah—yeah. Do you need some? I’ll go get them.” He moved past her and onto the doorstep, but paused before he turned the key in the lock. She was a bit like Mikasa—you could tell when her silence had an intention behind it, when she was stewing on something. He’d never realized that before now. She glanced at him sideways, not turning her head, and her tone wasn’t as guarded as usual.

            “Do you still have that umbrella?” Armin nodded. He’d been exiled from the Jaeger house once he’d noted that he seemed to be getting better; they hadn’t wanted to drag him back into this, so he hadn’t had the chance to return the item. Annie unfolded her arms, which Armin now saw had been pinning a stack of paper to her chest. “I’ll take it back, then. I’m going over there. I got her some notes for her law class. _Photocopied_ ,” she added when Armin looked at the proffered pages as if they were stolen goods. “I’m not going to hold people at knifepoint over ten pages of crappy notes.”

            “That’s probably best. You can come in; I’ve just got to run down to the basement for the masks.”

            When he returned to the main floor Annie was right where he’d left her in the hall, looking around without apparent interest or judgement. He appreciated that. With all the shifts he’d taken this week he’d fallen behind on the chores. There were laundry baskets stacked in the living room, the kitchen was a mess, the garbage needed taking out—it wasn't a household he was all that proud to say he ran, at the moment. 

            “Thanks,” she said when he handed her the box of masks. She immediately pulled one out, spreading it between her fingers as if she were playing cat’s cradle.

            “Most of the point when I wore it was so people would stay away from me,” he said, "so I'm not sure how actually functional they are." Annie shrugged as she pulled the straps behind her ears and fitted the protective papery shell around her mouth and nose.

            “It’s not comfortable.”

            “No.”

            “I wouldn’t have wanted to write a test like this.”

            “It was—well, not the worst thing I had going on on Monday.”

            “Still. Charitable of you to try not to spread it to the rest of us.” Somehow, with the lower half of her face obscured her eyes seemed to have a bit more life—but no, that wasn’t right. They’d never looked dead before. Now they were just easier to read. Normally Armin might have thought she was being sarcastic, but he didn’t have that suspicion now. “By the way. Do you think there’s any point in dating someone if it can only be for a few months?”

            “I—why me?” He fumbled to take the box as she passed it back to him. “I really have no experience with this…”

            “You’re smart.”

            “Academically.”

            “Also practically. You’re don’t over-sentimentalize. I think we have that in common, so I’m curious.”

            “…I think there’s still point to it. Emotional wellbeing isn’t just a long-term goal—not everything contributes to some sort of huge ultimate arc of happiness. Being happy in the short term is still worthwhile.”

            Annie blinked.

            “Right out of a textbook. I should have expected it, I guess…”

            “Is it the same thing you thought?”

            He expected to be told that no, she thought it was a frivolous waste of time; but Annie shrugged and shifted her glance sideways.

            “More or less. Phrased differently. I was thinking more like, ‘Fuck it, I like kissing her.’” Armin laughed.

            “So you’re dating her already?”

            “Not formally. I plan to be in about ten minutes. Thanks for the mask.” Her stride to the door was as confident as ever.  

            “Good luck,” Armin said, though of course she didn’t need it.

            “Same to you.”

            The door clicked shut behind her before he had the chance to ask what she meant.

 

            The flu appeared to have endowed Eren with a permanent case of bedhead. He’d been back in class for a week and a half now and still constantly looked as if he’d barrel-rolled all the way there and fallen asleep halfway.

            “You should probably comb it,” Armin said as he tried to get it to lie flat. Chemistry class was still technically in progress, but the teacher was handing back the tests they’d completed the Thursday before, so it had become a social free-for-all.

            “What. No. Why,” Eren said.

            “Because you look like a rooster,” Jean said. He sat in the row behind them and was therefore always in range to sidle into their conversations. “He’s really thinking in your best interests, here.” At just that moment the teacher passed by and dropped his test papers onto his desk; Jean’s interest in the other boys’ conversation faded with a mutter: “Well, shit.”

            Eren’s eyes were following the teacher, and his shoulders were squared, and his neck was tensed. Really this was what had prompted Armin’s attention to his hair, more than the mess itself. After several long and exhaustive study sessions Eren had seemed to understand the testable concepts well enough, but he’d still had trouble applying a few of them. That must have been stressful, especially given the general groan of despair that was washing over the class as the tests were returned, but Armin had never seen Eren so worked up about his marks before—certainly not so long before the term’s finals in January. They weren’t even through November yet.  

“Fuck,” Eren said as his own test flapped down onto his desk; he didn’t bother to say it under his breath. Armin glanced at the number in red—he couldn’t help it, and anyway Eren’s marks had never been kept confidential from him.

            “That’s really good, though,” Armin said. “You’re more than twenty points above the class average.” That had been another source of tension. Before beginning the uncomfortable process of giving the students their papers, the teacher had announced that he class average was a disheartening fifty-seven percent. She hadn’t _said_ she was disgusted with them, but her tone had carried the message off clearly. “That’s actually really amazing…”

            “Then what did you get?”, Eren demanded, and Armin only recognized his expression because of practice soccer games where he’d had to defend against his own team’s forwards.

            “Um—”

            Eren snatched the test from Armin’s desk, where it had been innocuously sitting face-down for some time now.

            “Are you fucking kidding me.”  

            “What’s so shocking?”, Jean asked, leaning forward again. “Perfect on a test is about standard, isn’t it?”

            “On _that_ test?!”

            “I had more time than you to get ready for it,” Armin said. “And anyway as far as averages go, a seventy-nine is basically an eighty, so—”

            “Most of the good scholarships start at eighty-five.”

            “…Yes.”

            “And I’m sitting right now with an eighty-three average across four classes.”

            “That’s true, but the term’s not over yet, culminating activities will boost your marks in January, and we have easier courses next term anyway.”

            “Except math.”

            “It’s data management. The averages are usually pretty high in that one. Besides, I’m taking it too—I’ll help you.”

            The past week or so, Armin had been doing everything he could to mitigate the stress. It had stopped being a matter of just making sure Eren kept his head above water; Armin was convinced now that he needed the Sina scholarship if everything was going to work out, and that he needed all the shifts he could get his hands on in case that fell through. So he’d studied and he’d worked and he’d done everything possible, and Eren still seemed to be having a meltdown for some reason.

            Armin was unsettled by it, but he wasn’t all that worried about him. Eren was not easily daunted; he’d power through this like he did through everything. Maybe this mark would give him the motivation he needed. In games, he always ran fastest when he was being outpaced. He’d make the change he needed to make.

 

            On December first Eren really did make a change, though it wasn’t the one Armin had expected. They were studying over at Eren’s house for once, primarily because Mikasa had said she was going out and Eren wanted to see who arrived to pick her up.

            “I mean, it’s obviously a date,” he whispered across to Armin. They were sitting across from each other at the Jaegers’ dining room table, which was tiled with their textbooks. Eren’s parents were both home, but Carla was trying to finish up some work in the bedroom, and Grisha was sleeping on the couch. Mikasa herself was just visible through the kitchen doorway, shifting slightly from side to side as she looked at her reflection in the kettle. Of course she looked fantastic—even more so than usual since she’d taken care with her outfit and had spent some time making sure her hair wasn’t jutting up at the back. Armin had tried to state and imply this as often as he could ever since she’d emerged from her room, but it seemed to be something she needed to confirm for herself. Repeatedly.

            “Ah…probably,” Armin said, because yes it was obvious, but no he didn’t feel he should comment. “You know she can handle herself.”

            “Well yeah. I’m just kind of curious.”

            The knock at the door had the dual effect of perfectly straightening Mikasa’s spine and tipping Eren over so far in an attempt to see the front door that he nearly spilled out of his chair. He remained perched like that with his peculiar sort of grace as Mikasa opened the door, said something to her date, and stepped out into the snowfall. Armin wondered whether Eren’s expression was going to crumple with anger or confusion, or whether he would just let it go. He continued staring at the door for several seconds after it closed.

            “Is there a single straight senior on either of these teams?”, he asked at length as he swung back into his chair more properly. Armin looked at the ceiling and thought it through.

            “Connie?”, he said.

            “Maybe. That has to be a record or something.” He dropped his gaze to his math books again. He was glad it was Annie. The two of them could handle each other—there wasn’t some huge disparity there like there could have been. “Hey, question three, here…I keep getting forty-nine, but the back of the book says it’s supposed to be ninety-three.”

            “Usually when I mess these up it’s because of the brackets, so double check that everything’s in them that should be and nothing else wound up in there. Sometimes the textbook’s just wrong, though, so I’ll see what I got…” With one hand Armin turned the pages of his binder, and with the other he held a course booklet from one of the three universities they’d applied to. He was scanning the upper-year science courses, hoping one or two would grab him behind the ears and scream ‘HERE, I’M THE ONE, I’M YOUR FUTURE.’

            Eren stared at him unashamedly and could not have been less worried about math problems or career choices. There Armin was again, trying to do three things at once—explaining mathematics to him while choosing courses while probably balancing chemical equations in his head or worrying about what shift to take next. Over the past few weeks he’d hardly seen his best friend outside of class or study sessions, and even then Armin had been in full-blown scholastic warrior mode. He was always running off after class or after studying to catch the bus for work. Mikasa’s date aside, they hadn’t talked about anything but school in at least five days.

            That morning, seeing him sulking over his toast, Mikasa had said Eren should talk to him. Then she’d said it louder. Then she had leaned across the table—nearly planting a palm in her cereal—glared straight into his face, and said, ‘ _He. Is. Armin. Arlert_. Just talk to him.’ And she’d been right. Of course she’d been right. It wasn’t like Eren to pull his shirt over his head and hide like this, especially not from Armin of all people. Eren was at his best when he was direct, and he’d always been able to be direct with Armin.

             “Armin—I don’t want you to go with me to school next year.” The pages stopped turning. Armin stared at his notes for a minute as if he might find an explanation crammed between a set of brackets or beneath a division sign. For all the usual clutter of his internal monologue, punctuated with facts and figures and diagrams, he could not seem to remember what words were or how they functioned. His whole mind was uncharacteristically, terrifying blank, the way it was in nightmares when you were just slipping through spaces and motions with no way to stop or control your actions.

            At last he looked up. Eren didn’t seem to be joking. The slight frown was in place, and he’d always been a terrible actor—he wouldn’t be able to look like that if he was trying to stop from laughing.

            Armin could barely part his lips.

            “Wh…”

            Eren nodded at the coursebook.

            “You can do better than these ones, right? You’re not applying to the best schools that’ll take you—any school would take you, so don’t just follow me because that’s what seems normal. And—I think maybe you shouldn’t be tutoring me anymore either. You don’t have the energy for it. The application period’s still open, so you’ve got time to change things. Alright?”

            It would have been easier if he’d turned nonchalantly back to his books after that and carried on studying, implying with his silence that he was finished with him, that Armin was dismissed. Cold, flat-out rejection would have been kinder. But Eren stared straight at him, watching to be sure that Armin understood and coming so, so close to preventing the pain from showing on Armin’s face. He would have hidden it if he could.

            “I don’t—understand—” There was something he hadn’t been forced to say since third grade when a teacher had dangled long division over his head tauntingly. It was the one mathematical concept he hadn’t been able to grasp immediately. He’d been forced to admit it in front of the whole class. “What did I do wrong—?”

            “You’re working way the fuck too hard! You’re not acting like you. I mean you’ve always been—sort of cynical, but lately you’ve just been _dead_. The only people who ever see you are Jean and Bertl, and that’s because they work with you and you’re fused to a cash register for every waking moment you’re not studying. But it’s not just that—it’s all year, you’ve been different.”

            Armin’s mouth was open and shapeless; he couldn’t stand it. He’d have been lying if he said he understood what Eren was talking about, and he felt like he’d been pushed down a steep slope, but he had to say something so he settled on what was easiest—

            “No, this is my fault, I messed it up, don’t—do this—”  

             “How is this your fault? It’s happening because I can’t keep up and you’re trying to drag me, and most recently because I was _sick_. If anything’s to blame here it’s—the bullshit capitalist education system where high school’s just a conveyor belt to university which is just a conveyor belt to whatever’ll make the most cash, where they thought it’d be really good for everyone to turn learning into this huge overblown scrap for money so that if you want to have a chance at having a stable life you’ve got to work ‘til your hands bleed and if you get sick, well, sorry, survival of the fittest—”

            This wasn't a moment for theoretical idealism to Armin, whose brain was still telling him that this was a fight for his most important friendship. He'd never thought he'd have to take up arms for this cause, of all things; he never thought he'd have to prove his worth and precise function to Eren. 

            “But that’s the system,” Armin said. “That’s just how it is. That’s what we’re living in, so I’ve got to adapt to it—”

            “No! We’ve got to _change_ it—”

            “I can’t! That’s—a huge long-term goal, one person can’t do that, especially not in some kind of municipal capacity, and even if he could—I’m going to be useless once we’re done university—I can’t help you then, so I have to do it now.”

            “How could you ever be useless?!”

            “Because I have literally nothing to give other than—knowing how to study, picking things up quickly, having a good memory—I’m not going to be any use at all once you’re out of school!”

            Eren had to blink several times as he tried to process this. This hot spark of anger darting along his spine had never been sent there by Armin. There were so many things to argue against here; ultimately he chose the wrong one, or at least approached it in the wrong way.

            “Who cares about that—why do you need to be _of use_ , what kind of a way to think about yourself is that—I didn’t think you were all about this social Darwinist shit—”

            “I’m not! Obviously I don’t believe in it, except that I believe that it’s clearly the way things actually work, right now.”

            “Don’t! Don’t ever—warp to fit the shape of this fucking place! Especially not for my sake. I’d rather have you with me now and lose you later than lose you now and never get you back because you’ve—frozen yourself over just to be serviceable!”

            Armin had seen Eren shout and scream; he’d seen him drive his knee into the respective stomachs of an endless string of schoolyard bullies; but never had he seen Eren so angry that his face had turned so disquietingly red before. Especially not at him.

            For a moment Armin clenched his fists and felt the air push up from his chest, ready to fire back with just as much heat—but he choked. _Froze myself over…?_

            Cold. Creepy. Calculating. It was the most common set of insults flung his way, all the way from kindergarten to now, by teachers and classmates and, for this special occasion, his best friend. His fingers slackened. The booklet dropped from his hand; he made it look deliberate, pushed it aside from their math notes as if it was an insect.

            “We shouldn’t yell. We’ll wake your dad. So, just…try the equation again. If it’s not the brackets, check your negatives.”

            It was exactly the opposite of what Eren had wanted. Armin had been grey beneath his eyes for weeks, but now it had spread. One minute too late, it occurred to him that maybe Mikasa had not intended for him to talk to Armin about this, but about the other thing. The ‘Armin you’re brave and brilliant and beautiful, please let me kiss you and hold your hand and sleep in your bed every night’ thing. One minute too late, it occurred to him that maybe if he’d tackled that issue first, he could have brought this one up more fluidly, in a way that wouldn’t turn Armin’s face ashen and his eyes dark.

            Eren tried to remember his exact words and why they would have fit together into the perfect incantation to turn Armin to stone. _I just said I wanted him to go back to normal, right? I wanted him to take it easier? Do what he wants, not what I want?_

_Did I say that? No. I said…I said—_

_Exactly the same thing people always say to him._

            _Oh fuck._

            “Armin, I—”

            Armin jerked his hand away when Eren tried to touch it. It had looked reflexive, and that made it so much worse than if it had been a deliberate choice. It was one thing for Armin to be upset, but if instinct was involved, and instinct meant getting away from Eren, then this had gone wrong on a whole different level.

            “I have to go soon,” Armin said, “so you should try that question again.”

            His voice had crystallized in the sharpest way imaginable. This was how he sounded when pushed too far by a teacher or classmate; this was how he sounded when confronting the enemy. The hair on Eren’s arms stood up.

            _Oh **NO**. NO. ARMIN IS PISSED AT ME I FUCKED UP I FUCKED UP—_

            Mikasa had been so close to forgetting her phone existed. She and Annie were walking to the movie theatre to see whichever movie started soonest, because they’d been genuinely unable to think of anything else to do. They were still testing each other out. Making out came naturally—it was just an extension of their competition on the soccer pitch, and it was easy and wordless and visceral. They’d gotten a lot of experience with it even before Annie had turned up on the doorstep with an open polka-dot umbrella resting casually against her shoulder, a paper mask, and a quirked eyebrow. It was simple push and pull. The actual dating bit was clunkier. They’d bumped hands a few times, and each time they'd carefully, calmly looked in opposite directions, as if they’d rehearsed. Mikasa kept her right hand, the one that kept brushing against Annie’s skin, clenched into a fist. It would feel so strange to loosen it, to be soft and unguarded around anyone other than Eren and Armin. She wasn’t even sure it was possible with Annie, and was just working up the nerve to try when her phone beeped accusingly.

            She made a frustrated sound low in her throat and pulled her phone from her coat pocket.

 

**I FUCKED UP**

            “Is it Eren?”, Annie asked, without having to glance at the screen. Mikasa nodded. “We’re not even halfway there yet. This is faster than I expected.”

 

**I FUCKED UP HELP ME**

 

            “Can I have a minute?”, Mikasa asked. Eren did have his pride, and it wasn’t often he so explicitly asked her for a rescue. Annie shrugged, and they stopped walking.

 

**Is Carla okay? Is something on fire? Did something explode? Should I call 911?**

 

**MOM’S FINE**

**IT’S ARMIN**

**I FUCKED UP SO BAD**

**I’M SORRY MIKASA WE’RE NEVER TALKING TO HIM AGAIN OK?? WE’RE GOING TO LEAVE HIM TO HAVE A PEACEFUL HAPPY LIFE FULL OF SCIENCE AND SUNSHINE AND PEOPLE WHO LOVE HIM**

**ACTUALLY BY THAT MEASURE YOU GO WITH HIM**

**ILL STAY HERE**

**I DONT MEAN I DONT LOVE HIM BUT NOPE IM STAYING HREE**

**…No, sorry.**

**I don’t know what you’re talking about. I can’t help. Talk to him about it.**

**ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING NO HAVE YOU EVER SEEN HIM WHEN HE’S MAD HE’S LIKE A TINY FURIOUS LION**

**I DON’T WANT TO MAKE HIM THAT ANGRY AGAIN I FEEL SO SHITTY ALREADY**

**ANYWAY HE WENT HOME**

**AT LIKE**

**A REASONABLE HOUR HE JUST BAILED DO YOU UNDERSTAND HE DOESN’T EVEN HAVE WORK THAT’S HOW PISSED HE IS**

**SO I FIGURE EITHER I NEVER TALK TO HIM AGAIN OR I GO PROPOSE MARRIAGE WHICH DO YOU THINK IS BETTER**

**Neither. How did you make him angry?**

            This time his response took so long that Mikasa was on the verge of stuffing her phone back into her pocket and marching on again with Annie.

**I was talking about school and I wanted to be direct but I kind of got mad and careless and maybe IMPLIED that I didn’t want to be friends with him anymore. And that I wanted him out of my life since it was inevitable anyway. And that he was corrupt and cold.**

            Mikasa stared at her phone for a good five seconds with all the disbelief and anger she would have directed at Eren, were he physically present.

 

**Eren what the fuck.**

**What were you thinking. How does that happen accidentally.**

**Go talk to him right now.**

**No he really doesn’t want to see me ok he left here at like warp speed**

**I think it’d be bad to go get in his face**

**Eren you are his best friend.**

**How do you think he feels right now.**

**How do you think this is going to improve if he dwells on it.**

**There is no chance in hell you meant to ‘imply’ what you say you implied so clear it up. He spent a lot of time getting rejected in elementary. He doesn’t need that from you too.**

**Right. Ok yeah you’re right**

            Mikasa turned her phone off. It was good that she was out on this date; witnessing this mess first hand would have been a good way to ruin an evening, especially since she would have been roped even more directly into coaching Eren through. Doing that would be difficult when, even hearing events from his point of view, she could see how badly he had mangled everything. She didn’t want to hear how this went—not until after she and Annie had sat through some action flick or historical drama or mushy romance. She was somewhat hoping for the latter, if only so she could see a bit more about how this was supposed to go.

 _Just for right now_ , she thought as her phone disappeared again into her pocket and she and Annie resumed walking. _It’s allowed for right now_. She’d spent so long worrying over and looking after and generally standing beside Eren, and she wanted to go on doing that, but—Annie’s hands were not in her pockets like normal, they were loose and inviting at her sides, and Mikasa wanted this so much. The wool of her scarf brushed against her nose. Mikasa inhaled deeply against it, braced herself, and then reached out and curved her hand around Annie’s.

 

            Armin was face-down on his bed with his pillow pulled over his head. The sound of snow on the glass was bothering him. The way his shirt bunched under his belly was bothering him. The way he _breathed_ was bothering him. Trapping himself with the sound of it under this pillow had been a bad tactical move, but it had felt necessary. He’d screamed into the pillow for a good thirty seconds before he’d pulled it out from under his face and clamped it over his head. He could not remember the last time he had been so angry—with Eren for saying something so absurd, with himself for crawling away like a toddler, with the world for letting so much nonsensical useless bullshit take place all at once.

            His phone buzzed, and the only reason he checked it was in case it was Mikasa or Jean. It wasn’t, of course, and once he saw Eren’s name on the screen it was too late not to go ahead and read. The messages kept coming in, so it would have become a racket anyway if he'd tried to ignore them.       

**Armin I am so sorry it didn’t come out like I meant it ok**

**I meant basically that uh well you know me and I’m going to do what I’m going to do**

**Which is stay here and scream forever**

**That’s never not going to be a thing**

**Only I want you to do…what you’re going to do. Whatever that is. Which I hope also includes taking care of yourself a bit??**

**Eren I literally don’t have parents and my grandpa is at work all the time.**

**I can take care of myself fine.**

            Eren carefully considered whether this was a good point to try to lighten the conversation by commenting on Armin’s culinary skill. He decided against it. Armin was not employing commas in his texts; he was as angry as he’d been when he’d left.  

**No I know I just mean like not stop**

**Sleeping**

**Eating**

**Going off doing all the smart person stuff you should be doing**

**Because you want to haul me with you**

**You’re strong as fuck but I really can’t ask you to do that ok**

**I just want you to go where you want**

            Armin did not receive the implicit part of this message, because though Eren was sitting with the heels of his palms crushing hard against his temples and his eyes squeezed shut, he couldn’t send the message telepathically and was unwilling to try it more conventionally:

            _But also stay here with me for fuck’s sake Armin why are we fighting we never fight like this—_

            All Armin got was the words on the screen. He wasn’t interested right now in inferring and interpolating and mindreading. It was draining, and at the moment he wasn’t sure it was worth it. 

 

**So are you just not going to school then?**

**No I am. Like I said I’m doing what I think I’ve gotta do you know?**

**I think having some credentials would help**

            Eren was halfway through the continuation—typing something honest and borderline incoherent about how Armin had definitely been instrumental in getting him within reach of being able to do that, and how grateful he was, and how he didn’t have any intention at all of repaying him by holding him back—when the conversation died in his hands.

**I’m going to sleep.**

            Armin leaned across and dropped his phone on his dresser among the keys and scraps of paper; it was already set to silent in an attempt to be final. It was futile—not firm enough. Once he flicked off the light, before he had the chance to hide his head again beneath the pillow, the screen still blazed like a beacon when Eren responded.

            Resisting reading the message was a momentary challenge, but Armin’s force of will won out. He rolled to face the wall so that any further messages would just be a dim pale reflection on the paint. Still fully dressed, he pulled the blankets up over him so that once he acclimatized, it would be too cold to be worth venturing out for the device. For just the next few hours, he had to pretend Eren did not exist. He was going to talk to Eren, once he’d cooled off slightly. He didn’t think it would be productive to scream at him to first of all shut up, secondly account for how in the hell he thought insulting him was a good way to defuse what had obviously become a loaded situation, thirdly—fourthly, fifthly, everything—to just listen for a minute, because clearly he misunderstood. Armin had always wanted to get out of the city and see the world, or at least a different part of it, but it was Eren who had made him believe that he deserved to and had the courage to, and who gave him the very pragmatic and tangible _drive_ to actually do it. Yes, he’d ached to see the ocean and the mountains and the forests since he’d first sat on his mother’s lap and watched a documentary about some far-off place whose name he couldn’t remember. Yes, he’d always felt the tug away from this city, especially once his parents had vanished out of it. Yes, the original passion was his. But it had been the sort of dream people trapped in their skulls their whole lives as a private oasis from daily life—right up until he’d spoken it aloud to Eren. At that point, it had become a plan, even if it was childish and just as vague as ever. It had been a promise. Increasingly as they’d moved through school it had lost its haze as Armin had realized that he was going to be capable of fulfilling it. Instrumental to fulfilling it. Now that he was older it didn’t matter so much if it turned out to be nothing more exciting than a university campus—he was going to get them there, together.

            Or he had been. Again, selfish maybe. He didn’t know anymore. He’d thought he’d wanted to help Eren do whatever it was Eren felt he needed to do, but then he’d _thought_ that this required staying with him and looking out for him. If what Eren actually needed him to do was step out of the way, the whole prospect became grey and flat and wasted.

            _But he said it was to take care of myself_ , he thought, in what felt like a rational tone. _He didn’t say I was being selfish by doing what I’ve been doing—he thinks it’s the opposite. He thinks it’s selfless._

            **_He thinks I’m not me anymore. How…?_** _Does he not remember getting home when he was sick? Has he just not been paying attention at **all** **I don’t understand what is wrong with him does he still have a fever or what** —_

            He pulled the blanket up over his head, inhaled slowly, held it, and released it. Alright. Alright. Losing control of a thought process like that was a sure sign he should sleep this off. Eren’s central premise was flawed, and the message had flagged and met its fiery demise, but his intention broadly seemed to have been good. Armin’s memory was better than Eren’s; he picked back through the conversation and gathered enough evidence to convince him that Eren had not been deliberately trying to hurt him, or intending to throw him out of his life. He’d been worried, which made more sense. All the time Armin had known him, he’d been protective. It made sense that he’d garbled the delivery. Eren got carried away sometimes; he had a hard time planning things through. Armin knew that. It just didn’t take away from the fact that those words had actually left his mouth.

            But then, he’d apologized promptly, and sincerely.

            _Well, he does everything sincerely. He’s a terrible actor…_

            The urge to call him was overpowering, to hear in his voice that he really was sorry and understood why Armin had left—it would have been reassuring to hear a theory on that, since Armin didn’t know for himself. A raging Eren was one thing that did not frighten him. He’d seen it too many times, and he knew too well that Eren wouldn’t hurt him. There was no sound reason for him to have fled like that rather than just out-arguing his friend. It wasn’t as if it had never happened before—they’d disagreed in the past, even if never that explosively. So things weren’t coming as naturally now. Fine. They were older. It wasn’t as easy; life got more complicated. He’d expected, with Eren at least, that wouldn’t hold true, but it was alright. It was probably inevitable—he’d known it for months now, that things might change.

            _So that wasn’t the problem, then. It wasn't that we were fighting in and of itself._ The cold comment had hurt, but that hadn't been what had thrown his sympathetic nervous system into overdrive in the first place. It had been earlier than that. 

            Maybe it was that Eren thought he couldn’t manage this. _Ahh, there it is_ , he thought as something in his gut slithered and flinched _._ Eren had made him feel small. Insufficient. It was a hideous feeling Armin had been trying for years now to bury beneath test papers and lab reports. He had little to be proud of, by his own estimation. One of the only things he’d been able to look to as worthwhile had been his brain, as it functioned in an academic context. Failing to understand or apply any given concept or theory always felt like having his legs kicked out from under him (an experience he was also familiar with). It hurt, and it made his eyes sting, but he'd never had such an ego that the fall was unbearable. Failing his friends, though—now there was a precipice. That was why it had been so important to him to tutor Eren and Mikasa. He’d nearly refused in ninth grade when they’d asked him after they’d determined that no, their teachers really didn’t care about them. The thought that their careers and their futures would lean so heavily on his ability not only to learn, but also to _teach_ , had made his knees knock together. Saying no would have been perfectly acceptable, given that he had his own future to cultivate; saying no would have been infinitely easier, and Eren and Mikasa would have pushed through on their own. They would have managed fine.

            But he’d wanted to do it. He’d wanted to help them himself, even if it meant facing their failures with them and suffering some of his own as well. It had been difficult, but his desire to help them had been stronger, in the end, than his fear of failing them. Agreeing had been the source of many anxious nights with too little sleep, but it had also been one other, greater, brighter thing to like about himself. He’d been useful to the people he cared about.

            Armin let his face drop heavier his pillow; he let his eyes close.

 _I’ve done alright, haven’t I…?_  

 

 

            Armin and Eren did not speak in chemistry the next day. They successfully completed a biology lab while exchanging no more than ten words. They bumped elbows as they both reached for a test tube at the same time. Eren just dropped his arms to his sides and let Armin take it. After math class Armin saw him striding purposefully home, without even Mikasa at his side.

            There had been a few points throughout the day when Armin had considered saying something to him at a quiet moment or between classes. Something simple, soft, reconciliatory. There had been more moments when he’d considered grabbing Eren by both his wrists, pulling him down so their eyes were at the same level, and saying as loudly as he needed to, “ _Hey how about we talk about this like we’ve been best friends for thirteen years and not like we’re in kindergarten_.”  He’d decided against the former because he wasn’t sure he felt appropriately squashy for it, and the latter because he frankly didn’t want to hear the catcalls urging them to kiss.

            So, once he’d caught Mikasa in the hallway before she too left school for the day, and once he’d confirmed that no, Eren wasn’t running off to work right that moment, he decided to hell with it. The stomach-lurching moment of apparent rejection had passed; Armin might as well get some clarification out of it so they could end this on firmer footing, even if they were walking in opposite directions. He waited until he got home, to the safety of his bedroom, before he contacted Eren. His grandpa was home, and if Armin was going to have another screaming fit he didn’t especially want to test how well he could project.

 

**Do you want me to stop teaching you?**

**Idk**

**We can see how it goes for a while, if you want.**

**Are you sure**

**You seemed pretty upset about that point in particular**

**I’ll be fine.**

**It’ll give me a chance to start scholarship applications.**

**You’re going to get the Sina one though what’s the point**

**I didn’t fire you for the sake of it you know you’re supposed to get some damned rest**

**…You really don’t get to fire me. You never paid me. I helped you because we’re friends.**

**I know**

**That was just**

**Fuck**

**A phrase i guess idk**

            The implication rankled, but it wasn’t worth pursuing. Armin had already registered his displeasure, and there were more important things to discuss.  

**You’re applying to the same schools as before, right?**

**Yeah**

**So am I. I’m not really fielding arguments about that. They’re good schools. I didn’t just throw myself at the first ones I thought would accept you.**

**Ok got it**

**I just think you could do better**

**You obviously didn’t look at the pictures of their labs. They’ll suit me just fine.**

            It was true; Eren hadn’t seen the images themselves. He’d been distracted by way Armin simultaneously smiled and bit his lip as he scrolled through the photographs and blurbs about the facilities, as if he’d been trying to physically contain the enthusiastic raving he’d let loose a few moments after. Eren had missed most of that too, and regretted it now. If he’d been paying closer attention to the actual words—if he’d thought of it as more than just a pleasant scene to witness—it would have been harder to misunderstand Armin's intentions so completely.

**Now, are we still going to be friends when we go, or should I be angling for the status of archnemesis at this point?**

**What???**

**Holy fuck**

**Yes still friends always still friends**

**Unless you don’t want to be??????**

**I’m going to call you hold on**

            Armin would have been enormously surprised if Eren had actually settled with a phone call. To prevent Eren from either screaming the message from his porch or crashing into Armin’s room sometime within the next thirty seconds, Armin scrambled to respond.

**Eren it was a joke**

**You’ve seen my dresser and I don’t think you found a villain cape in there**

**If you did please let me know and call the police immediately**

**I don’t want a roommate I didn’t know I had to be the one to kill me I’m looking forward to it being at your or Mikasa’s hands next year**

**Omg Armin no**

**No way in hell even if you’re a supervillain**

**And no way in hell am I going to be a supervillain or even a petty small-time villain so don’t give me the ‘cog in the evil machine’ talk again alright?**

**Also I think being your rival would be too much effort**

**I’d have to transfer into an arts program and work on my textual analysis skills way too much**

**It’s really not worth throwing my future away for**

**I’m so terrible at poetry analysis I can’t even imagine four years of that oh god all I can do is scansion and only in the most basic way oh god no I couldn’t do it my TAs would hate me**

            The lack of end punctuation was the clearest indication of success. When Eren was sending huge rage-filled rants to Armin, if the latter started forgetting about grammar in his responses it meant he was really engaging with the conversation—having fun.

**Ur still the worst at jokes**

            Armin sighed and sank against his pillow. They were going to be fine.

**Anyway my point is, if we’re still friends and we’re still living together, we’re still going to need money whether I get the Sina scholarship or not. So I’ll just go ahead and get some other ones.**

**Ok yeah go dominate the hell out of the funding scene**

**So we’ll try it I guess? You not helping me?**

**Mikasa too?**

**I’ll talk to her and see what she wants.**

**Try not to get too far behind.**

**Ha ha that one was a bit better**

**That was a joke right??**

**Yes**

**I do mean it though. Let me know if you need any help.**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm still sick, so this has been proof-read less than normal (amazing I know, given that I put 'hate' instead of 'hat' a few chapters ago). Sorry if it's dripping with errors~


	8. Chapter 8

            Armin pushed the tack firmly into the board and then stepped back to appraise his work. This poster actually seemed to be sitting straight. He’d wrestled the first few into more precise alignment, but the last one or two he’d left embarrassingly haphazard. It didn’t matter so much. They weren’t precisely works of art—just plain text listing Armin’s name, average, interest in tutoring anyone in any grade, and dummy email address created for the task. Probably one of the staff members would rip it down in short order anyway, as had happened to the ones he’d put up the week before. He’d received five emails from panicked freshmen and sophomores during that time regardless. The name of the highest-scoring student the school had seen in years was a powerful thing to struggling students, even if they’d never met him. They’d all just wanted one-off sessions before the last few tests before Christmas, and Armin was hoping for some longer-term customers to fund him.

            “I hope to hell this is some kind of a joke.”

            Jean had managed to sneak up on him, despite that he was wearing heavy winter boots that by rights should have announced his arrival at every step. Probably they had; school had been out for nearly ten minutes, and the near-empty halls should have echoed every sound. “There’s one week left before break—who’s going to need tutoring now?”

            “Exams aren’t that long after we get back,” Armin said. Jean slackened his neck so that he could give the ceiling a disbelieving glance.

            “Fair enough, but my other main point here is that you look like you’ve recently been scraped off the side of a road with a shovel. You’re effectively working full-time, with all the shifts you take, and you spent eight hours a day in class. Also, I mean—there is no damned reason you should have jumped when I talked just there. I’m not exactly a master of stealth, here, so your perception’s going wacky. You’re going to be easy as hell to mug walking home from your shifts.”

            “I’ll keep that in mind,” Armin said, after compressing his mouth into a firmly unimpressed line. He pulled the strap of his backpack higher up on his shoulder and walked on. Jean ambled right along with him. “Shouldn’t you be on your way home?”

            “I tried that; my car’s face-first in a snowdrift right now. I didn’t even make it out of the parking lot.”

            “Do you need help getting it out?”

            “Yeah, I came in here hoping to recruit. I didn’t expect to find the patron saint of failing students, but hey, if he’s offering.” Armin half-sighed, half-laughed.

            “Okay. Let’s go, then.”

            They were just about to step out into the parking lot when a locker door clanged shut. Both boys swivelled to look and found Mikasa staring straight back at them with her fingers still splayed across her locker door.

            “Hey, Mikasa, want to help me out?” Jean asked. He could not apparently see how severely she was frowning.

            “What is the problem?”

            “My car’s stuck in a drift.”

            “Yes. Fine.” Her gait over to them was brisk. They waited for her, but she walked straight past them. Jean and Armin glanced at each other; Jean shrugged, and they followed her outside. Jean’s car was wedged into a mound of snow not far from the parking lot exit. All three of them stood there for a moment, surveying the scene.

            “Has this ever happened to you before?” Armin asked. Getting a license would have meant routinely throwing money away on insurance he had no means to use; cars had never been high on his list of priorities. Most of what he made was going straight to university savings. Since his grandpa had sold his car years ago, Armin’s knowledge of the things was extremely limited.

            “Yeah, once,” Jean said as he pulled the door open and dropped into the driver’s seat. “I know how to get it out, but I can’t do it myself.”

            “What do we do?” Mikasa asked.

            “I put some sand by the wheels already. I just need you two to rock the front of it for me—just push it back a bit, sort of periodically. I’ll spin the wheels, and hopefully it’ll push itself out.”      

            While Jean shut the door and started the engine, Armin and Mikasa took up their positions just beside each of the front tires. Armin pressed his hands to the metal and then pulled them away to find his skin covered in sharp red-brown flakes.

            “Ahh…”

            Jean, who had just finished rolling down his window, saw this and grimaced.

            “Shhhhhhh, I know,” he said.

            “Why ‘shhhh’?”

            “You’ll hurt its feelings. Poor sucker's trying its best. Just maybe pull your sleeves over your hands or something so you don’t shred yourself. Alright. You guys ready? I’m going to give it a bit of gas, so push on it a bit just over the wheels…”

            A minute or two of wheel-spinning, car-pushing, and car-insulting later, the tires bumped out and over the indent they’d made in the snow, and Jean and his car wheeled away from Armin and Mikasa. Even as he skidded half the parking lot away, Jean’s crow of success was still quite audible.

            “Alright!” he called across once he’d successfully braked. “Armin, get in, I’ll take you to work.”

            “How did you know I had a shift?”

            “You always have a shift—and anyway when you threw the rest of those posters in your backpack I saw your work shirt in there. Do you start at three? I’d bet twenty bucks you start at three.”

            “…I start at three.”

            “Ha. Are you only staying until close or just working straight through to tomorrow?”

            Armin made a face at him, and Jean wisely chose to pull his head back into the car.

            “Fuck. Window won’t—damn it _why_ …”

            While he struggled to roll up the window manually, Armin made as though to walk after him. Mikasa planted one hand on each of Armin’s shoulders and forced him to a halt.

            “We have a problem,” she said. 

            “Do we?” He couldn’t imagine what it could be—her marks were better than solid, and the second half of the soccer season was so far off that there should have been no threats looming there.The gravity of her tone suggested some grim pronouncement. Eren had run off to join the military, or Mikasa had contracted some terminal disease, or Armin was going to be framed for a jewel heist. 

            “Yes.” She pulled a piece of paper from her pocket; once it was uncrumpled and held out, Armin recognized it as his own contact information. “Is this because you’re fighting with Eren?”

            “I’m not fighting with Eren,” Armin said. “I…don’t see what this has to do with him at all.” They hadn’t resolved the outstanding issue, but he hadn’t been giving it much thought since they’d reached their agreement. After a full weekend dedicated to the task he seemed to have exhausted all avenues when it came to scholarships and bursaries—all the remaining ones didn’t open applications until much later—so for the moment he had to look for funding elsewhere. It seemed like the obvious thing to do. That aside, he saw Eren in class. He thought they’d been friendly enough. "It's not like we had an exclusive tutoring arrangement. There are lots of other people who want help." 

            “He hasn’t been texting you.”

            “I’ve been busy. He has too, probably.”

            “Armin, we walk to school together every day, and even if we didn't, I’m in bio with both of you. You hardly talk. I didn’t say anything at first because I assumed you would sort it out on your own, but you’re not.”

            “It’s nothing.” Her eyes narrowed. “Really!”

            “If you’re upset with him you should tell him that.”

            “It’s not like I’m hiding anything. He knows I was angry. We had a—disagreement, and then we just decided to see how it goes without me tutoring him. You know that—you said it was fine if I stopped tutoring you too, so—”

            Mikasa brandished the poster.

            “This isn’t what he wanted. He wanted you to rest.”

            “That’s not really the point, though. It’s fine for him if it was _his_ point, but I really have to—” Her palms came up again, prepared to brace his shoulders. He wasn’t going to get past her.

            “Forget Eren, then. I know it started before you fought. Pushing yourself this hard isn’t good for you.”

            Armin’s eyes half-closed automatically. Not this again. Not from Mikasa too. They’d always had this unspoken alliance. He’d hoped she would understand. 

            “I’m fine.”

            “You look like you’ve been hit by a bus. How many of these kids have you already tutored?”

            “Just a few.”

            “And how many shifts have you taken this week? How many hours have you spent studying? How many have you spent _sleeping?_ ”

            “I…not a lot.” It wasn’t as if he spent all night poring over his textbooks, or as if he spent the hours quivering beneath his blankets as scholarship requirements and admission averages plagued his every thought. It was just that any time he was about to drift off, some spark of information from that day’s class or study notes would blaze across the backs of his eyelids. It was hard to sleep when your brain so desperately wanted you to know that _about two-thirds of the energy used in the human body supports basal metabolism_ , or _as the ion becomes a stronger oxidizing agent, its metal becomes a weaker reducing agent_. And yes, of course it was worse when he’d spent time going over even more material with students who were struggling and needed it broken down in many different ways—the ninth and tenth grade curricula were making some special guest reappearances lately in these late-night mental light shows. “It’s just one week to Christmas break, though. It won’t be a problem.” Mikasa’s eyes were not unkind, but they were unyielding.

            “Historia is having a party next week. Come with me.”

            “Aren’t you going with Annie?”

            “You’re my friend. Annie likes you. It won’t be awkward. We’ll have fun.” It was difficult to believe her when her expression was so dour, but Armin couldn’t get angry as he had with Eren. For all this concern to be coming from both her and Eren was enough to plant doubt in him. She didn’t tend to just let things slip out haphazardly, and since she’d clearly spoken to Eren about the argument she must have known that it was this same line of conversation that had started it in the first place. For her to pursue it despite knowing it was such a tense subject, she must have thought the benefits outweighed the risks.

            “Mikasa!” Rather than wrestle with the window again after finally succeeding in closing it, Jean had opened his door and stuck his head out. “I can drop you off on the way, if you want.”

            “No. It’s fine.” She glanced at Armin once more and then stalked off without as much as a shrug or a wave in parting.

            “She seems a bit tense,” Jean said when Armin slid into the passenger seat.

            “Um, yeah, I guess so.” The corners of Jean’s mouth tugged downward for a moment, but whatever he was thinking, it didn’t merit a comment right away. The haggard cough of the engine and the wheeze of the heater substituted for conversation until they were halfway to the supermarket. Jean had been drumming his fingers on the steering wheel for the last few blocks, and he finally spat it out while they were waiting at a particularly lengthy red light.  

            “I could punch his face if you want.”

            Armin had been looking out the window, and since the only person on the sidewalk was an innocent-looking octogenarian, he had no idea what Jean was on about.

            “Whose?”

            “Eren’s. At first I thought it was just coincidence that you were weren’t fused together at the shoulder, but it’s been a long time now and I think I can safely say you’re fighting. I can make it less metaphorical if you want. I don’t mind.”

            “I’m not sure how that would help even if we _were_ fighting.”

            “Might be cathartic.”

            Jean was using terms from his English class; midterm season was truly upon them.

            “I’m not actually angry,” Armin said. “Thanks, though.”

            “Alright, well just…let me know. I’m not afraid to lecture him into the next life, either. I mean if it’s that he asked and you said no and he freaked out I will happily beat the hell out of him, or lecture the hell out of him since you’d probably prefer that—”

            “Asked what?”

            “…Ehm.” The hand Jean had been using to form an indeterminate threatening gesture returned to the steering wheel and pretended it had never left. “Don’t worry about it. If you have to ask that, it’s probably not what happened.” 

            Armin tilted his head slightly. Seeing this out of the corner of his eye, Jean winced and directed a groan at the drivers' side window with the excuse of checking his mirror.

            “Asked…me out? Has he said he’s been considering that?”

            “…I can neither confirm nor deny…”

            _Eren, are you serious?_ At least with Annie and Mikasa he could see why there would be some tension and uncertainty, some hesitation to ask. They’d had an unspoken rivalry for the past four years, and they were both fairly taciturn in most situations—they weren’t exactly the sort to make all their feelings plain. He could see how they could run into difficulty reading one another. Armin and Eren’s mutual affection had always been so much more overt.

            _Then again, I’m frozen over, apparently, so maybe it’s tougher to make it out through that pesky layer of ice_ , Armin thought with a dull throb of anger between his ears.

            Jean was scratching at his hair.

            “Eugrhgh, um, don’t think too hard on it, alright? I am trash as a friend... Forget I said anything.”

            Saying it aloud made it impossible. Up until this moment, Armin had never thought too hard about what dating Eren would be like; it had crossed his mind but never received much investigation, because he wasn’t sure there would be an appreciable difference. Admittedly he suspected there would be sex at some point, unless Eren found himself on the same greyish area of the sexuality spectrum as Armin. The idea of sex didn’t repel Armin at all—he was fairly curious about it—but he couldn’t say it was so important to him that he was going to be the one to bring it up. The everyday half-conscious touches were more than satisfactory.

 _Well, they were_. They’d been so much less frequent the past few months. Falling asleep with Eren, twice, had been the best birthday present imaginable, but he didn’t see why it should need to be kept in reserve for special occasions. Bringing that into the realm of the everyday would have been a _marked_ improvement.

            At least this news explained the proclamation that Eren wanted Armin to go forth and enter a life of blessed matrimony with science; it had been some self-imposed heroic labour. Let go of the person you want; it will all be very tragic and character-building. _And aggravating and insulting, since you didn’t tell me that was what you were doing, Eren Jaeger you damned banana. If you want to ask me out, really all you have to do is **ask me out**. Sending me away is kind of counterproductive. _

            All the same, if Eren was nervous about it, Armin would leave him to sort himself out. If what to Armin was warmth and ease and comfort was to Eren something more jittery and intimidating—well, that couldn’t very well go on forever, and if what they wanted was the same then it should be resolved happily somewhere down the line. Of course Armin could do the asking himself, but if it was just going to spook Eren it would be completely contrary to the point. Better to let him take his time. What mattered most in the meantime was sorting out the rest of their situation—the foundation of their situation. This meant having A Talk which unfortunately would have nothing to do with kissing or sleeping or Armin listening to Eren’s heartbeat.

            _There’s no reason we can’t have that talk after, though, is there? Maybe not about going out, if he’s nervous to bring it up, but just…talking, just hearing his voice…_

            Jean’s car bumped to a gentle halt. He’d managed to pull in to a parking space without skidding off into another misadventure in friction.

            “Aaaaaaaand plenty of time to spare,” Jean said. “Which I guess makes it alright for me to say, you should really take a minute to go grab something for dinner.”

            “It’s not even three yet,” Armin said.

            “Yeah, but did you bring anything to eat on your dinner break, is the question here.” Armin glowered at the dashboard; it was answer enough. “Armin, you’re going to actually die.”

            “I just forgot.”

            “I know—you’re not the kind of guy who usually forgets the basic shit, though, are you? That’s kind of the crux of the whole thing. You’re a mess and you’re not _usually_ a mess. If it was Jaeger or Braus it’d just be a normal day, but you? What’s it even for?”

            “Nothing,” Armin said. “Everything, I don’t know…” No; no, he really couldn’t drop this on Jean, especially when he couldn’t articulate it to himself. It wasn’t just school, and it wasn’t just Eren. It was both together—the fact that his two usual handholds, his intellect and his best friend, were either no longer steady enough to take his weight or were prompting him to climb in different directions. He hadn't worked out which it was yet, or whether he'd just misjudged them both and everything was actually alright. “I’m just stressed. It’s fine. I can take care of myself.”

            “Clearly you can. I don’t think you _are_. Is all.” He hadn’t broken down his sentences this small with Armin since he’d decided to tell him that _I’m so sorry Armin I’m just. Um. Interested. In someone else? A bit? Sorry. I mean it’s not like. You’re not. Um. Amazing and all. Really! It’s just I uh. I don’t think, circumstantially…and. Yeah._

            That conversation had been a disaster. But this just now—this hadn’t been so painful, had it? A simple _I know you can do this, but I notice that you’re not_? Armin wondered when Jean had started allowing himself to be so openly caring, without the usual mess of bravado. Beneath the wool of the hat, the same one he’d used to protect those flowers from Marco, Jean’s eyebrows were rumpled. His mouth was ironed out thin, like he wasn’t fully convinced he wanted to be having this conversation, but he wasn’t squirming or fidgeting or even busying himself by getting the keys out of the ignition.

 _At what point exactly did Jean get more mature than me?_ , Armin thought, and didn’t let himself bail out of the car with a stammer and a stumble.

            “Okay,” he said, as he knew he should have said to Mikasa. He should have been so much better. “I see what you’re saying. I'll try to fix it.” He pulled his backpack up onto his lap and put his hand on the handle of the door, but he didn’t let himself escape just yet. “Jean, just…thank you.”

            Jean snorted.

            “I didn’t do a damned thing. You’d better get in there if you want to raid the TV dinners before your shift starts.”

            “Are you not working?”

            “Nah—we’re out of sync by half an hour. Three-thirty ‘til eight-thirty; I’ve got to go get my uniform still. Don’t let the hungry hordes grind you down before reinforcements arrive.”

            Armin laughed and got out of the car.

            “Don’t crash again.” He shut the door before Jean could retort.

            After a brief trip to the frozen food aisle and once he'd deposited his findings in the staff freezer, Armin changed into his uniform in the supermarket’s bathroom: green shirt, black slacks, blindingly lime-coloured apron. Once he stepped out of the stall he did what he knew he shouldn’t and peered at the mirror over the sink.

            With that face staring back at him in the blank electric lighting, Mikasa’s argument made a lot more sense to him. Armin didn’t have much time for his reflection. At home the only time he spent in front of a mirror was when he brushed his teeth, and then he was more focused on the task at hand than on his actual appearance. Looking at himself now, he wouldn’t have gone so far as to say he looked as if he’d been hit by a bus—recently recovered from the plague, maybe.

            _It hasn’t even been that long_ , he thought as he squashed his cheeks with his palms. It drew some blood nearer to the surface, so that he looked more like a living creature. Running his fingers beneath his eyes didn’t have the same effect. The purplish grey there had looked comical, like he’d gotten carried away with eyeshadow, but it didn’t smear when he touched it. _No way this happened so quickly. No way this just started when I fought with Eren._

 _So maybe that’s part of what he was yelling about_.

            He trailed his fingers back away from his eyes, along his temples (they were pounding), into his hair. Blond strands fell loose around his fingers; he sighed. He’d forgotten the elastic to tie his hair back. It wasn’t a rule that he had to have one, but it was considered more professional. His managers didn’t like that his hair was long enough to be tied back in the first place. They didn’t think boys should do things like that.

            _To hell with it_. He went out into the break room proper. The space was dead at the moment, with none of his coworkers crowded around the lone table to gossip or sleeping through their lunch breaks on the cushioned bench they passed off as a couch. His managers could glare at him all shift; he didn’t have the patience for this anymore, and he wasn’t going to go begging hair ties from his peers.

            Forgetting that _and_ neglecting to pack a meal _and_ failing to sleep the night before was an increasingly compelling pile of evidence, though. Maybe the others were right. All the scholarships in the world weren’t going to do him that much good if he was dead. _Maybe they'd cover the cost of the funeral, though; that might console some people._  That night if he found his inbox too full of queries about tutoring, maybe he’d just tell most of them he was overbooked. It wouldn't even really be a lie. And if he was feeling particularly bold, maybe he’d ask Eren to stay over. They could do something mindless—just watch infomercials or lie around and talk about what to get Mikasa for Christmas, and whether they should get something for Annie now, too. They could build a fort like they’d used to, fall asleep, wake up past noon on Saturday. There was no reason they couldn’t. As long as Eren wanted it too—and everyone kept saying that he did, in whatever capacity—there was no fair or valid reason why he couldn’t still have his best friend.

            Armin glanced at the clock above the break room door. He didn’t have long, but his register could wait. There was still one opinion on this matter—the most important one—to clear up.

            Eren answered on the second ring.

            “Hey Armin.” He sounded perfectly casual. Good. It was what Armin had wanted. Just like normal, just like nothing had happened, just like Eren.  

            “Hi. What are you doing after eight?”

            “Nothing. Why? You want to study? Trig’s been kicking my ass since you stopped—um.”

            There went casual for a nice dive out the window.

            “We can if you want,” Armin said. He could feel his voice slanting upward. Unnatural. _J_ _ust do it—_ “I was more thinking we could talk, though.”

            “Okay. What about?” Armin pretended to have to cough to give Eren a moment to reclaim his dignity. “Fuck. Alright, that was not my best moment…obviously to talk about the…fight. Thing. Yeah, we can definitely do that. I’ll be over at eight. You’re working before then?”

            “I’m in the breakroom now. Maybe make it eight-thirty? Grandpa won’t be home, and there’s no point in you sitting around by yourself.”

            “Okay.”

            That could so easily have been the end of the conversation. For a good long moment Armin was prepared to let it be, but Eren didn’t hang up or signal that the silence was becoming too long, and Armin sure as hell wasn’t going to. He watched the seconds drip off the clock and did not think about how he should have been out on the floor by now. They might have sat there listening awkwardly to each other breathe and both feeling increasingly perverse about it if Armin hadn’t finally decided to go on.  

            “Also, after, if you want to stay over?”

            Eren’s words tumbled out so fast they might have been accidental. Armin wondered how close he’d been to just hanging up.

            “You mean you’re not—I thought you were mad still.”

            “No—no, I’m frustrated, but I don’t think I will be once we’ve sorted this out. I think we need to do that, _directly_ , but once we have I really, really know we’re going to be fine.”

            It wasn’t strictly speaking true. Armin was furious—he just didn’t think it was really meant for Eren as much as it was for himself, and for the university system, and for generalized humanity. Certainly he was not so angry—no matter how broad the scope of it—that he wanted Eren to be afraid of talking to him, or that he was willing to accept that this relationship could end after thirteen years because of one overdramatic argument. Trying to balance things passively clearly wasn’t good enough, and if Eren wasn’t going to be the one to take the more active approach, Armin would do it.

            Armin thought Eren didn’t answer immediately because he was nonplussed or annoyed or otherwise disengaged from the conversation, but in actuality it was because Eren was clutching the hair at the top of his head, staring at the ceiling, and basking in the first rays of hope he’d had since the argument.

            “Yeah, I’ll definitely stay over,” he said, once he remembered that Armin was waiting on his answer. “You want me to bring anything?”

            “No, just…yourself, should be good. Way more than enough.” Armin’s phone felt very hot against his cheek all of a sudden.

            “Great—great, I’ll—see you really soon—bye Armin!”

            “Bye,” Armin said, and the word felt alien.

        

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is (relatively) short because I've actually written out the rest of it and was going to slap it all into this chapter until I realized it would be absurdly long. So, I just picked a place to divide it and called it a day. That means the next chapter will be the last (for now), and that I'll have it posted soon.


	9. Chapter 9

            “Armin. Um, hey. Armin? I think that’s you…uhm…”

            Armin had been staring at the ill-defined mess of colourful boxes in the pharmacy department for some time now, wondering how he'd never noticed how loudly the lights in this store hummed. Now blinked and looked around. Bertl was leaning over his checkout, several rows away. He had one hand over his mouth and was pointing with his other at Armin’s midsection. From his expression Armin could have inferred any number of catastrophes—Armin’s apron was on fire, there was a snake where his belt should be, he’d been shot and was too much in shock to notice.

            “Sorry?”, Armin said, looking down with less than adrenaline-fueled speed. His lethargy was rewarded: he found himself in perfectly good order. His nametag wasn’t even crooked.

            Bertl kept pointing, but he’d lowered his hand from his face and was mouthing something at him now.  _Vote? Bow? Bone?_ ** _Phone_** _—_

Both Armin’s hands immediately clapped over his right pocket, which buzzed incriminatingly beneath his fingers. It was loud enough that he should have heard it even if he hadn’t been able to feel it. Having a phone with him on the floor, receiving a phone call—now there was a real disciplinary issue. People had been fired for less.

            Armin's immediate instinct was to pull the phone from his pocket and hurl it into the cereal aisle like a grenade, but he managed to keep himself together. He found the volume button along the side and set the phone to silent through the fabric of his slacks. That wasn’t enough, of course, since if the shape of it in his pocket was obvious. He needed to transfer it to his apron pocket, or he was sure to be caught the next time the nearest manager went on her rounds.

            “Coast’s clear,” Bertl whispered. Armin took it on faith. He stood as close to his register as he could and then slipped his phone from his pants pocket to the inner pocket of his apron with the smallest motion he could manage. Just as he was about to let the tension leave his shoulders, a woman said, “Hello!” and he nearly jumped right up onto the conveyor belt. The speaker was not his hard-faced manager, but a kindly-looking old woman with a cart full of groceries. There was no reason she should care that he had his cellphone, if she’d even seen it.

            “Hello, how are you?”, Armin asked—a year’s worth of repetition filling in where his mental agility failed him. Serving customers was practically a matter of muscle memory at this point. He got the woman through checkout with ease and smiles and head filled with thick grey clouds. 

 

            The pile of belongings mounting in the front hall was giving Carla Jaeger an excuse to look up from her paperwork. At first she thought maybe Eren had determined again to move out on his own, as he had when he’d been seven, nine, and thirteen years old.

             _It is an odd year again_ , she thought. But then, there’d been no argument with either her or with Grisha lately, and Eren seemed to be on good terms with Mikasa. Hopefully they were not then in for another round of melodramatics. She settled on a more innocuous scenario. 

            “Eren, you really can’t go camping in December,” she said when Eren bounded down the steps to check on what he’d already stockpiled. “There’s supposed to be a storm today; you’ll freeze.”

            “Not going camping, Eren said, dashing out of the room again. He used the bannister to propel him around the corner. Carla was beginning to worry he was going to wrench it right out of the floor, but she didn’t complain. He’d spent so much time lately lying face-down on the couch that she was glad to see him moving again—in no small part because that couch was her favourite place to stretch out her legs and bury herself under all her binders from work as she sorted through the accounts. The turf war had been getting tedious. And of course it was good to see some life in her son again; he didn’t normally get so lethargic, or so studious.

            “Where are you going, then?”, she asked the next time he passed through. The binder propped open on her stomach was becoming less and less interesting with every lap.

            “Armin’s. I won’t be back tonight.”

            “Oh, good. I always hoped I'd get the chance to give the lecture about safe sex.”

            Eren missed a step on the way back to his room and thunked down onto the one beneath it; then he continued running as if uninterrupted, except for the obligatory, “Mom don’t!”

            When he stumped back to the first floor he had his toothbrush in hand, so Carla gathered that he was probably winding down for the moment.

            “It was an innocent question,” she said, flipping a page and finding yet another wall of numbers before her. “I am your mother, you know. Making sure you’re safe is part of my job. At least I didn’t set your father after you.”

            Eren shot her a glower over his shoulder as he stuffed his toothbrush into his backpack. He knew very well it was absurd to have packed so much in preparation of spending just one night at Armin’s, but he couldn’t help it. It wasn’t every day he was asked things like this in advance, and he wanted to be prepared. He wanted all the movies that made Armin laugh the hardest, and he wanted all the junk food he’d had stashed in his room, and he wanted that soft borrowed shirt he'd never found a good moment to return. He wanted his math textbook and all his notes so that he could show that he’d been trying, and so that Armin could help him and know that this assistance was valuable and appreciated. That was not something Eren was going to screw up again. This was going to be straightforward, and he was going to be honest, and eveything was going to be fine. 

            “What’s all the running around for, anyway, if it’s just Armin?”

            “Because it’s not  _just_ Armin—he’s  _Armin_.” 

            “I mean that it used to be you didn’t panic so much about him.” Eren was fussing with something in his backpack; she could hear him muttering curses. Carla crossed her ankles and leaned her chin on one fist. She spent so long working in the neighbouring city these days that she didn’t see Eren and Mikasa as much as she would have liked. Her own senior year wasn’t so sunk in the distant past that she’d forgotten the tension of it, or the way social dynamics had shifted beneath her feet; she’d wanted to be around more to help Eren and Mikasa. “Are you trying to fix a falling out?”

            “No.”

            “Then why are you bringing all your worldly possessions over to him?”

            Rather than answer, he pretended to be repacking the bag. Carla pushed the binder down and slid back so that she could sit up against the armrest.

            “Relationships do change, Eren. You’re not in first grade anymore, and neither is he. Sometimes people grow apart. That doesn’t mean what you had was less important. I think you’ve been good for each other and helped each other grow, and that’s going to continue to matter even if you don’t see each other anymore." He wasn't even pretending to be busy now. He was crouched in the front hall, shoulders hunched, hands fallen still. “On the other hand…this might only be a temporary change. Twelfth grade makes for a lot of pressure, especially when there are scholarships to worry about.”

            Eren twisted around; his eyebrows were high on his forehead.

            “What the hell? Did Mikasa tell you?”

            “I put to use my keen parental intuition—and also the paper thin walls. You can't argue like that in this house without someone overhearing. My point is…Eren, sometimes friendships really do end, and that’s perfectly normal—but if you’re sure you want to hang onto this one, I think you should talk to Armin about it. That way you can help fix it. If there’s nothing you can do, that’s fine, but there might be. Maybe you’re growing apart, or maybe you’re both stressed, or maybe this is just a misunderstanding. You can’t know if you don’t talk to him.”

            “Well I’m going over there! We’re not just going to sit silently the whole time.”

            “You can build him a shrine out of terrible movies if you want, but if you’re not going to  _talk_  with him it’s not necessarily going to get less tense.”

            “I’m not five—the whole point of me going over there is to talk to him.”

            “Then what is all the extra for?”

            Eren turned back to his backpack. As he zipped it shut he scowled, not with anger or doubt but with determination. 

            “To see if we can still do ‘normal’ afterwards, or if we have to find a new way.” 

 

            “I’m done in half an hour,” Jean said. “Are you sure you don’t just want to wait?” He was leaning against the edge of the table in the break room. He was on his last break of the evening, and Armin was throwing his apron into his locker. It wasn’t until it clanged against the back wall that he remembered that his phone had still been in the front pocket.

            “Eren,” Armin said with a vague motion of one arm as he leaned into the locker to dig his phone out with the other. “Math.” He scrolled through a few menus with his thumb. Historia had been the one who’d tried to call him, and she’d sent several follow-up texts asking him whether he was going to her party, whether he had an outfit in mind, whether he’d let her help him pick something, and so on. The sudden enthusiasm was more than he could parse given his present mental faculties. He and Historia were friends, but she’d always been closer with Eren than him. 

            “What’re you still teaching him for if he’s been an asshole?”, Jean asked.

            “He’s not. This isn’t an Eren thing. It’s more general than that.”

            “Yeah, but I can’t launch your entire life and the whole social system into the sun. One teenager is a more manageable order, so just let me know and I’ll see what I can do.”

            “Alright.” He shrugged into his coat. “Really do try not to crash on your way back. It’s supposed to get pretty bad out there.”

            “Yeah, yeah. My record so far this winter is awful, but I’m not actually a hundred percent garbage at driving.”  

            “Right. See you Monday.”

            The walk to the bus stop was wasn't far, but it took a long time. The wind was vicious, clawing straight beneath Armin's collar and down his back. He realized he was still wearing his work shoes and not his boots when the snow started sinking in around his ankles. He thought briefly of turning back—he wasn’t so tired that courting another bout of illness seemed like fun—but at this point he just wanted to get home.

            Even given how slowly he trudged, he was too early for his bus by at least fifteen minutes. He sat down at one edge of the bus stop bench, clenched his hands in his pockets, and deflated. The sun had sunk past the horizon long since, so the tumble of snowflakes was visible only in the tiny sphere of light beneath each pole. He might have been in his own private snow globe. With all the potholes and grey concrete buildings in shadow, with the blanket of snow softening the street sounds to a dull murmur—with just this snow and this light—he could pretend that the city was beautiful.

            Maybe he was too hard on this place. It wasn’t as if he had never been happy here. It wasn’t as if nothing good had ever come from it. Some of the most wonderful things imaginable had managed to grow through the cracks in the concrete.

             _And they’ll keep doing it, and I’ll help them if I can_. He’d managed with his grandfather’s flowers, after all, though he hadn’t known how at the start. He’d had to teach himself. But he was a fast learner.  

            There was no plan going into this confrontation with Eren. Even if he’d had any idea of what words to use, he suspected that reading from a script was only going to get him called cold. Again. Sometimes he’d wondered whether he really was that way, when he saw the way Eren radiated with frenetic energy; sometimes, Armin wondered why he couldn’t do that too. Mikasa had helped him in that regard, since he knew for absolute certain that she was passionate and dynamic, even though it couldn’t necessarily get past her outer fortifications at all times. He’d learned it the moment he’d first met her eyes after his parents had died, and he’d never, ever forgotten it. 

            All the same, dwelling on the notion that Eren thought of him manipulative and frigid hurt too much, so he was going in unprepared. Honestly he had never thought he would be in this position. For so many years he and Eren had simply arrived at understandings without any sort of navigation. Eren had yanked his hair in kindergarten, but once the teacher had pulled them apart and made Eren apologize—once they’d locked eyes that first time—Armin had known that Eren was sorry, and Eren had known that he would not ever do it again. That had set the model. Sometimes they’d fought, but fixing it had been easy; sometimes things had changed, but they’d adapted seamlessly.

             _We’ll adapt now too_ , Armin thought.  _There’s nothing wrong with having to work at it a little_.

 

            Mikasa had escorted Eren over to Armin’s house, despite Eren’s railing against her from the time they put on their boots to the present moment in Armin’s kitchen. Eren was sitting on the counter now with his arms crossed and his eyebrows slanted at what he hoped came off as a dangerous, menacing angle. Mikasa, seated at the kitchen table, could not have looked less perturbed. 

            “I wasn’t going to back out!”, Eren said.

            “I know that,” Mikasa said. "You're the opposite of a coward." 

            “So leave!”

            “No. You two need a referee. Hange says I could get qualified very easily.”

            Eren decided that this would be less aggravating if she changed her tone to something more humorous. He’d lived with her for eight years and still wasn’t always sure whether she was making a joke or just being opaque. She wasn’t even looking at him; she was quite enraptured by her phone. Apart from it and the lamp on the table, the room was dark. 

            “We do  _not_ ,” Eren said, looking away. “We’re going to be fine. He said so, and I feel it too. We’re fine. I don’t know why you care, anyway.”

            “Because I care about you, and about Armin. I want you to be happy, and you’re making each other the opposite of that, and it’s embarrassing.” 

            That wasn’t really something he could argue.

            “It’s going to be awkward as fuck with you here, though. You don’t think we can have some privacy?”

            “Not if you’re going to make each other miserable again.”

            “Well we’re not. We’re going to make sure.”

            Eren was staring so determinedly into a dark corner of the kitchen that he didn’t see Mikasa smile at his renewed confidence.

            “What time is it, anyway?”, he asked. 

            “Eight forty.”

            “Hm.”

            “What time did he say to meet you here?”

            “Ten minutes ago.” He thumped his heels against the cupboard doors, just once, and looked out the window. The snow was collecting on the sill; it had been going like this for hours now. Getting home the next day might be a quest in and of itself.  _Maybe he’ll ask me to just stay another night_ , Eren thought with a wave of giddiness.

            “Maybe his bus is running late,” Mikasa said.

            “Probably.”

            “You should call him.”

            “What for?”

            “To make sure he’s alright.”

            “He’s fine. He gets pissed when people treat him like he’s not. I mean, there’s been a very recent, very vivid reminder of that.”

            Mikasa held both hands out in front of her.

            “Hurt pride,” she said, lifting the right, “wandering lost in a snowstorm,” lifting the left. It was compelling enough.

            Armin didn’t answer, so Eren had to sit through the automated voicemail intro. When the beep sounded he realized he hadn't actually thought of what to say. 

            “Heyy, Armin—” He lost his voice for a moment with frustration. “Where, uh—where exactly are you? We can meet you at the bus stop if you want. I mean I say ‘we’—Mikasa’s here too. For some reason. Actually the reason is to make sure we don't fight. And she’s getting worried.” She scowled at him, but he pretended not to see. “So come home already! We can study all this sine and cosine shit until I pass out, okay? And I brought you a million movies to choose from. So just get back here, or call me back.  _And_  call me back. First. I mean the order matters.” He paused, held the phone away from his face, said, “And I’m sorry I yelled at you and I think I know what I did wrong and I want to check!”, and tossed the phone away like he’d found a spider on it.

            “It’s still on,” Mikasa said.

            “Fuck—” He threw himself after it onto the floor. “Fu—aarrrghghg why won’t it end the call—”

            “Probably because you keep throwing it around. They really aren't built for that.” Eren pushed himself back onto his knees, rising again into Mikasa’s view flushed and tousle-haired but grinning victoriously.

            “There," he said. “That wasn’t bad, right?”

            It actually made her laugh, just softly, as she returned her gaze to her phone. 

            “It was heartfelt, anyway,” she said. 

            “Do you think he’ll call me back?”

            “Yes.”

            But he didn’t. Twenty more minutes ticked past. It was now an hour after Armin’s shift had ended, and half an hour since he should by all rights have been home. Eren didn’t require prompting this time. The second his phone’s screen read nine o’clock, he had it pressed again to his ear.

            “Armin, seriously, what the fuck?! Where are you—it’s fine if you changed plans or whatever, but could you let me know first?! Like it’s fine if you’re staying longer at work, but—just—” He glanced out the window, and his shoulders tensed up so much they nearly reached his ears.  He couldn’t even see the other side of the street anymore for all the falling snow. “—just let me know? And be careful coming home, because it’s turned into this gross wintry hellscape out there. I’m worried. Okay? Be pissed all you want but I’m officially worried.”

            Once he ended the call he looked at Mikasa, who was staring out past the silhouetted flowers on the windowsill.

            “Do you know if Jean was working today?”

            “He drove Armin in, so I think so,” Mikasa said. “Should I call him?”

            “I’ll do it.”

            “Hey dirtbag,” Jean said after the third ring. Eren gritted his teeth to prevent a response in kind from escaping his mouth.

            “What’s that for?”

            “Reflex mostly. Armin says it’s not your fault he’s all broody, but I guess my subconscious feels differently. Sorry about that.”

            Eren caught a growl and pushed it down before it became audible. There really was no point in them fighting. They'd been over the fistfights since middle school, and though the friendly bickering matches they had now were gratifying in their own way, this wasn't the time. 

            “Did he pick up an extra shift?”

            “He went home an hour ago. He’s probably just—” A pause which Eren didn’t like. “He said he was going to be teaching you how to count. Did he not make it back?”

            “Obviously not if I’m calling you. Did he go the usual way home?”

            “I don’t know—probably? You’re sure he didn’t just get confused and go to his place instead of yours? He was dead on his feet. I wouldn’t be surprised if he just went home accidentally. Even a brain like his has got to run out of gas  _sometimes_.”

            “I’m at his house. My mom would’ve called me by now if he was at mine just hanging around.”

            “Maybe his bus didn’t make it on time and he decided to walk.”

            “Have you looked outside lately? Nobody should be walking in this.”

            “Yeah, I’m not exactly thrilled about it either. Okay, look, I’m already at home, but I’ll pick you up and we’ll look for him—”

            “No—no, I’m not waiting—”

            “For fuck’s sake, Jaeger—fine. I’ll take the same route, and I’ll pick you up—don’t fuck around out there though! I’m liable to run you right over, so watch yourself!”

            “Okay—right, I’ll—” All of a sudden the front door was before Eren, and he wasn’t sure where his phone had gone. Mikasa was already in the hall. He wasn’t sure when she’d left the kitchen, but she was standing now before the open door, holding his coat out. All Eren had to do was yank on his boots and then they were out there in the storm. 

 

            Warmth pressed against Armin’s cheeks; for a moment it was all he could sense, or at least all he could focus on. It tilted his face upwards, baring his throat to the cold, but he didn’t mind. The movement was surprisingly soft and gentle.  _Surprisingly? Why surprisingly…? What are my expectations of unidentified heat blobs…?_ There wasn’t any context to help him sort it out. He could have opened his eyes, he supposed, but he was so comfortable like this that he just couldn’t see the point.

            The sound that accompanied the warmth, following a moment after that first contact, was anything but gentle. It was harsh and loud and familiar, one of the most familiar sounds in the world—

            “Armin! Armin, look at m—oof—”

            The warmth disappeared all at once, and where it had been the wind now burned his face. Armin wanted it back. He began to open his eyes at the moment just before he was yanked forward and over something solid. Something solid and  _moving_ —

            “Wlah!”, Armin said as he was hauled up into the air, facing downward and with his hands still caught in his pockets. “What—”

            “Mikasa put him  _down_ , you can’t just—hey—”

            A few jostling steps later and Armin was shoved into a cramped, windless, hot space. It wasn’t until Mikasa crawled in after him and slammed the door behind her that Armin realized that this was a car—Jean's car given the awful wheezing of the heater—and that part of the reason it was so warm was that he’d been shoved hard against Eren.

            “We’re all going to get arrested for kidnapping, you know,” Jean said. He was mostly obscured from Armin’s view by the driver’s seat.  

            “Just go!”, Eren said as he and Mikasa pushed and pulled Armin into something more resembling a sitting position. “Hospital! Now!”

            The car started forward with a lurch.

            “’m okay,” Armin said into the collar of his coat, though to be honest he felt like he’d just been fished out of a bowl of soup. That he was able to draw his hands from his coat pockets felt like a small miracle, and he managed it just in time; Mikasa handed Eren the strap of Armin’s seatbelt, which Eren buckled. If he’d done this five seconds earlier, Armin’s arms would have been trapped.

            “Hands,” Mikasa said. Her hair was slick across her face, and her sopping wet scarf was shoved down away from her mouth. Armin tipped his head back against Eren, trying to see whether he’d gotten soaked too, but he never did get to see. “Armin, your hands.” Mikasa had both of hands held out, palm upwards. Armin stared at them for a few seconds before he arrived at a supposition about what he was supposed to do. He held his out over hers; she immediately started squeezing his fingers. “Can you feel that?”

            “Yes…”

            Muddling his mind even more than the general confusion and this puzzling line of inquiry was the distraction presented by Eren. The easiest way to ruffle Mikasa up like this was to put Eren in some sort of danger, so Armin wanted to confirm that he was alright. Mikasa seemed intent on keeping his attention, so Armin was limited to what he could feel—which was the pressure of Eren’s chest against his shoulder, fitfully increasing and decreasing.

            “Where were you running…?”, Armin asked. “It’s way too early for training…shouldn’t in this weather anyway.”

            Mikasa directed her gaze over Armin’s shoulder to meet Eren’s. Then she shook her head sharply.

            “Eren, check his feet.”

            Eren readily stooped to comply. There was none of the expected grumbling, and Armin was too sleepy to work up much confusion as Eren unlaced his shoes and pulled them off. Even when his socks went after them, Armin continued to stare with fascination at his hands, which still rested on top of Mikasa’s. His were blotchy pink and white, hardly intermixing.

            “Like marble cheese,” Armin said with furrowed brow, as if this were a momentous experiment with intriguing results. Then he produced such a shrill yelp that Jean swerved.

            “What?!”, he asked, craning around to look into the back seat, “what’s happening—”

            “Sorry,” Eren said. He had given the offending squeeze to one of Armin’s smaller toes. “That means you can feel them, though, so that’s good. Jean! What’s taking so long?”

            “You think the hospital is just two blocks away? You think, even if it was, I’d be able to see it in this fucking blizzard? We’re all going to be lucky if I manage to get us there without driving through a building.”

            “Just hurry up!”

            “I really feel okay,” Armin said.

            “You’re shaking!”, Eren said, with all the wrath he’d directed at Jean.

            “Armin,” Mikasa said, and he had never thought that her deadpan speech would be so comforting. “What is homeostasis?”

            “It’s…” He rubbed his eyes. “Equilibrium or balance within an organic system, to keep it functional in the face of external changes.”

            “Right. What’s three thousand and forty-nine times four hundred and twenty-seven?”

            “One million, three hundred and one thousand, nine hundred and twenty-three.”

            “Kicking my ass at math thirty seconds after being frozen to a bus stop bench,” Jean said as he took a left turn. “Typical.”

            “Bus stop bench…”

            There was something about that. Armin was sure this was a message he could decode. It shouldn’t have been difficult—not after that multiplication, which had solved itself so naturally.

            “Armin.” His gaze went again to Mikasa’s eyes, which were dark and calm and reassuringly steady even as the road slid beneath the car's tires. “What is hypothermia?”

            “It’s…oh.” Of course. All this snow against the windshield—there was a storm, and he’d been waiting for his bus, and he’d—he’d… “I was just asleep.”

            “As opposed to what?”, Eren croaked behind him. Armin didn’t remember him climbing back up to his seat, but he became aware now of Eren’s hands—one clutching tight to the slippery shoulder of Armin’s coat, the other resting along the curve of Armin’s side. Again Armin tried to twist so that he could see Eren’s face, and again he was prevented. This time the culprit was the stark white light streaking through the windows. The city had no streetlights this bright—they were in a parking lot. The car screeched to a stop.

            “We’re here,” Jean said. “C’mon, let’s get him inside—Mikasa, maybe don’t throw him around like an inanimate object this time—”

           

            They were in the waiting room of the ER for all of two minutes. Armin convinced Mikasa that no, the seven hour wait amongst the sickly and battered mass of potential patients was not worth getting told to simply go home and warm him up. The odds of a chilly, damp high school student being bumped up in the queue were nonexistent, especially relative to the chances of the lot of them contracting something infectious from their peers.

            By the time they reached Jean’s car again Armin was mostly recovered from the disorientation. He still had the strange sensation that his brain had been replaced with a duplicate in felt, but that had been the case all day, and he was confident it wasn’t an effect of his ill-timed nap. This time, at least, he managed the walk through the parking lot without some anonymous hand at his elbow to steady him. He’d shrugged it off a bit more forcefully every time, and was disgusted with himself for that as much as he was for needing the help in the first place. They were worried about him—justifiably worried about him—and he was more concerned about salvaging his ego. 

            He did up his seatbelt in the middle back seat without looking at Eren or Mikasa, and avoiding Jean’s glance in the rear-view mirror. They’d all told him—they’d all said he’d get hurt. His fingers shook as he secured the buckle. He was rattling around in a coat that now felt about four sizes too large for him. The cold was no longer a strange intangible thing as it had been when he’d first woken; it had sunk through his clothes and now sloshed about, contained by his very skin—which itself was cracked and red from the wind. All he wanted was to get home and sleep straight through the week. He didn’t want the twenty lectures building up over his head every time Eren and Mikasa glanced at one another. He didn’t want to go to work. Just sleep.

            “Hell,” Jean said, once everyone was settled. “What do we do, then? Coffee to warm him up?”

            “Not caffeine,” Mikasa said.

            “I really think this is being exaggerated,” Armin said half-heartedly. His neck couldn’t seem to support the weight of his skull.  

            “You were asleep. You might not have woken up.”

            “I’m sure I would have… It was just lack of sleep, not the temperature. It isn’t even that cold.”

            “It doesn’t need to be, especially when you’re soaked like this!”, Eren said. It was the first time he’d spoken since his accusation about Armin’s trembling. Armin lifted his head and was perfectly ready to snap something back, some intricate lie about how actually  _no Eren was absolutely wrong and should shut up now_. When he met Eren’s eyes, the stream of made-up non-science dried up. Eren was frowning, but there was no way to mistake that expression for anger. Armin slumped back against the worn upholstery.

            “Just take me home, please, Jean.”

            “Yes sir.”

            When they reached Armin’s house Jean didn’t come inside with them even when Eren pointed out that continuing to drive in this weather was ridiculous.

            “I want to sleep at some point,” Jean said. The other three were all huddled around his window at the curbside.

            “You can here,” Armin said.

            “Sleepovers are more fun when they don’t involve huge lecture series about the value of winter safety. Thanks though.”

            “Text me when you make it back, then,” Mikasa said.

            “Will do.”

            “Sorry,” Armin said, and the other three all looked at him with expressions he couldn’t read. He hoped it was just the still-falling snow that made it like this. If these three people were illegible to him, he didn’t know what he was going to do.

            “Just get your asses inside,” Jean said. He tried then to roll up his window and dismiss them, but the thing once again jammed. “What did I do to deserve this…”

            Eren snorted. Armin thought he snorted, at least—and a snort was almost a laugh, which maybe meant it was going to be okay. Maybe.

             _This really could not have happened at a worse time_ , Armin thought, giving away a large cloud of snowy-white breath. He turned and made for his house. Mikasa followed him, keeping her hands free so that she could catch him if he dropped. Eren stayed at the curb, ignoring the snow that was collecting on his shoulders and in his hair and the wind pushing at him. 

            "Hey," he said. Jean actually looked up from his struggle with the window. "Thanks for showing up." 

            "S'nothing," Jean said. "Maybe you and Mikasa would've gotten lost in this mess. Or maybe you wouldn't have gotten there soon enough. You know?"

            Eren smiled. 

            "You worry a fuck of a lot for a guy who likes to act all smug." He didn't even bother trying to disguise it as an insult. 

            "When I've got jackasses like you for friends? Yeah, I do."  Jean glanced at the walkway. "Catch up with them, yeah? I got the sense that whatever you bunch were doing was going to be a 'hell or high water' sort of a thing."

            "Yeah."

            Armin managed to get his keys out of his pocket as he moved up the walkway, but when he didn’t seem capable of actually lining the correct one up with the lock he resigned any lingering sense of optimism. He was less worried about his actual condition than about the reaming out he was going to receive for letting it be so obvious. Mikasa wound up opening the door for him, so Armin let her go first even though it meant bumping shoulders with Eren as both of them tried to get over the doorstep at the same time. Armin shed his coat as he stumbled past Eren and through the hall; next went his shirt. As he was pulling off his belt the fact registered vaguely that he was stripping in full view of Mikasa and Eren, but this was less of a disincentive than the bite of the air against his limbs.

             _It’s dark anyway, and they’re not eight-graders, so screw it._ He shoved his slacks down around his ankles ( _work slacks—ugh, even forgot to get changed_ ), stepped out of them, and then tripped over a laundry basket. Never had he been so happy to have fallen behind on the laundry. Everything he needed was right here, pending the trip upstairs to his dresser. It was too dark and he was too cold for it to matter what clothing precisely he hauled from the basket. All that mattered was getting it on him. He yanked a pair of pyjama bottoms up over his boxers, squirmed into the first shirt he found, and when it turned out to be a t-shirt he hauled a sweater on over it.

            “You done?”

            Armin looked in the direction of the voice. Yellow light spilled out from the kitchen doorway, but the question had come from the hall. 

            “What…? Yeah, I…” He’d meant for it to come out firmer than that.

            The light flicked on. While Armin was still blinking in a haze of colourful afterimages, one blanket, two, three, were dropped around his shoulders and pulled firmly around him. The scratchiness of the wool and the lingering smell of peppermint tea told him that these were the blankets normally on his grandfather’s chair. Once he was thoroughly wrapped, he was tugged around to face Eren and Mikasa, who were a unified front complete with matching frowns.

            “Are you alright?”, Eren asked.

            “Yes.”

            “You should eat,” Mikasa said. “Something warm.”

            “Like what?”, Eren asked. “If I had more money on me I’d say we could order something…”

            “Make something.”

            “Such as?”

            “I don’t know.”

            “I’ll just run home and grab my wallet—”

            “The storm’s still going.”

            “It’s all of two blocks. I think I’ll live.”

            “It was barely three blocks to the bus stop,” Armin said, and neatly ended the argument. Although he was still quite convinced that his problem had been exhaustion, he wasn’t going to pass up a good way to end the dispute. “We have soup, though. Just in a can. It’s easy.” He wiped his nose on the back of his hand. It was gross, but better than dripping on the floor. “Even I can do it fine.” He offered this with a smile, or what felt like one to his admittedly somewhat windburned face. Eren and Mikasa looked at each other and formed a tacit agreement. While Eren made for the kitchen, Mikasa pulled a cushion off the couch with one hand, grabbed Armin’s wrist with the other, and hauled him after their friend. Eren tended to the soup while Mikasa put on the kettle and prepared hot chocolate from a packet.

            “It will have some caffeine, but not much,” she said, glancing over her shoulder at Armin. He was sitting on the cushion on the floor, readjusting the blankets. He could just as easily have settled on a chair, but one of the heating vents passed below the kitchen floor, which was always comfortingly warm. He'd never noted this aloud to Mikasa; she must have felt it for herself over the years. 

            “I don’t think it’ll matter,” Armin said, giving up on the textiles and leaning against a leg of the kitchen table. Nothing—nothing in the world, including cream of broccoli soup and/or hot chocolate—was worth being awake at the moment. He dozed but didn’t let himself slip away entirely. The last thing he needed right now was the humiliation of being carried up to bed.

             _Actually it might not be so bad. They don’t seem that angry with me…might be sort of nice, now I think of it…_

            “Eren. You didn’t stir this enough,” Mikasa said. Armin snapped back to attention and then sagged back to semi-wakefulness approximately two seconds later. Eren and Mikasa were sitting on the floor with him now, kitted out with cushions of their own, and each with a bowl and a mug. Armin let his gaze sink and found steam rising from two similar dishes set before him. “Armin, you should still eat, though.” He nodded. The belligerence of a few minutes ago was being successfully crushed beneath his recognition that these were his friends and should be treated more kindly. Then there was his acknowledgement that yes, possibly the situation would have gotten serious if they hadn’t gone looking for him. They’d gone running out there in a blizzard to make sure he was safe, and no matter how embarrassing he found that, he was grateful all the same.

            He downed the soup as fast as he could, in part to demonstrate to the others that he hadn’t in fact become a bad-tempered, surprisingly mobile ice sculpture. They were scrutinizing him. Normally Armin would have pretended not to notice, but today he looked back, to Mikasa for the stability and to Eren for—for—he didn’t know. For how aware the eye contact made him of his pulse, maybe—for this undeniable heat thrumming steadily through him, as if just by staring he could make Eren feel it too and say,  _Do you see now? Do you understand I’m not cold?_

It wasn’t something he could say out loud given that he was still shaking. Chattering teeth would undercut his point to some extent. So he ate his soup and then held the mug against his chest and said, “My phone…should still be in my pants pocket, probably…”

            “I threw everything in the wash,” Eren said. “Grabbed what was in your pockets, though.” He leaned over Armin to the table and then passed him his phone.

            “Are you calling your grandfather?”, Mikasa asked. When he went to reply she was watching his mouth. Watching to be sure he formed the words confidently, he could only assume. He hoped it was that. He hoped he hadn’t dribbled soup down his chin.

            “No,” he said. “He’d just worry… I’m calling in.” Hopefully that made sense to them, because he had no more attention to give that conversation. He had a call to make. “Hi Susan, it’s Armin…I’m not going to be able to come in tomorrow.” Eren’s whole posture shifted, as if there had been pressure crushing down on him that had abruptly lifted. He got to his feet, taking his bowl and spoon with him, and stepped out of Armin’s field of view. Mikasa went with him; one of them started to fill up the sink. Having apparently passed some sort of test, Armin pressed on with more confidence. “I’m not feeling well. No, I don’t think it’s contagious. I just got stuck outside for a while on the way home. Um…yeah, okay, thanks. I will. Thank you.”

            Armin sat with his phone to his ear long after the conversation ended. After all, he had three messages to listen to while his friends discussed the preferred consistency of soup. One from Historia, two from Eren. Historia’s, as the earliest message, was at the bottom of the list, but since Armin suspected it would be friendlier he decided to tackle it first.

            “Armin! I’m sorry, I just remembered you’re probably at work—I was just calling to check whether you’re coming to my Christmas party? I really think it’ll be worth your whiiiile—shh, Ymir. Stop laughing.  _Ymir shut up_ —I know he’ll get fired, but obviously he’s not answering anyway so I might as well—”

            Ymir must have snatched the phone at that point, because her voice—formerly just background noise—became clearer.

            “Armin answer it! Just answer your phone! It’s great! Susan’ll get so red in the face and it’s  _so fuckin’ satisfying_  once you’re canned—”

            “Shhh! I had to console you for a week after she threw you out! So Armin. I really think you should come to the party. It’ll help you unwind! It’s a good—social atmosphere, you know? And I  _guarantee_  you it’ll be worth it. I’ll text you later with details! Bye!”

            Armin wasn’t sure he wanted to know what she had in store for him. For the moment he chose to believe that her intentions were innocent. There wasn’t room in his head for any more anxiety at the moment.     

            Next up was Eren’s second message. And—ah yes, being yelled at again, this time by an Eren trapped half an hour in the past. Armin sighed, let the message finish, and brought up the oldest message in his voicemail.  

            Eren and Mikasa were halfway through a debate about whether a globule remaining in Mikasa’s bowl was a vegetable or pure unstirred condensed soup when they both went perfectly still. In unison, they turned to look over their shoulders. Armin was pressing his forehead against his knees, the whole mass of blankets was trembling, and when he raised his head they could see that his eyes were watering. The immediate instinctive clench of Eren’s fists, teeth, and gut eased in the next moment when he saw that Armin was laughing.

            “I think he is hysterical,” Mikasa said. “This is clearly very serious. I’ll call Grisha and see what he thinks.”

            “Wh—Mikasa he’s obviously not hysterical—” She strode out and slammed the kitchen door in his face.

             _Oh._  He was being given a chance, here. He turned on his heel. Armin was wiping his eyes on his sleeves.

            “What’re you laughing at?”, Eren said.

            “You. You’re really ridiculous, you know…”

            Seeing Armin’s phone sitting on the floor, Eren could easily guess what had happened. He grinned.

            “Yeah, sorry about that—I was nervous. You know.”

            “Yeah, I do.” Armin leaned against the table leg again. The laughter had stopped, but traces of it were still all over his face.

            “You feeling any better?”

            “A bit.” He looked up at Eren. “The soup really wasn’t stirred enough.”

            “I know! Sorry my full attention wasn’t on—soup. I mean, c’mon. Best friend just got dragged out of his own personal snowdrift.” He knelt beside Armin and ran a thumb across his forehead. “You’re kind of clammy…”

            “My hair’s still wet. I think I’m just damp. I'm fine.”

            “Do you mean it?” Armin nodded. Eren couldn’t restrain himself for more than a moment. He snapped suddenly around Armin—arms and legs locked firmly around Armin's torso, chest to Armin’s shoulder, face to the side of Armin's head. “You really have to stop,” he said, with the edge in his voice that had gotten him thrown out of dozens of classrooms over the years. So many people mistook that tone for sheer blistering wrath or arrogance, but Armin knew it was more complex than that. It could be conviction, or defiance, or passion, or love—it could be any mixture thereof. Eren certainly wasn’t afraid to let fire fill up his veins, but so often he’d been cut off or thrown out simply for getting emotional about the subject at hand. 

            And hell, having that directed at Armin sent more heat down through his fingertips and toes than any amount of canned soup could have. It just wasn’t in him to tell Eren he was overreacting, or that latching onto him like this was unnecessary. The contact felt good, and he didn’t want to be the sort of person to shut Eren down just for feeling. Not when he wanted this as much as Eren did. 

            “I know it turned out…not ideal, but what do you want me to do?”, Armin asked. He didn’t sound as indignant as he would have liked. The cold had crackled his throat raw, and in any case, this problem had arisen from overwork. It was difficult to be curt when you were sleepy. “I have to get us to college in one piece.”

            “No you don’t! Not by yourself. Me and Mikasa are working too. You’ve got to sleep and eat and—not do this to yourself. No more like this, alright?” Eren pressed his cheek against Armin’s.

            “I’m okay,” Armin mumbled into the blanket. It was an automated response at this point, more a cover for his embarrassment than actual annoyance. “I don’t need you two coddling me.”

            “It’s not coddling!” Eren pushed himself back so that the fierceness of his expression wasn’t wasted, but he kept a grip on Armin’s shoulders. “You really could’ve died, or gotten sick, or hurt, or anything. And anyway—were you coddling me when you got me home when I was sick?”

            “That was different.”

            “How? It wasn’t at all, was it? It was just—I needed some help and you gave it, like you always do. That’s fine! It’s—better than fine.”

            “Okay, but your last heroic gesture didn’t go so well, so…”

            “Heroic gesture?”

            “Letting me go run free and barefoot in the flower meadows so you can just…struggle on here with your quest and…all that fucking nonsense.” Eren blinked. Then Eren blushed.

            “I’m sorry I freaked out, but you’re clearly angling for us to just—not be friends anymore, and I thought if that was how it was going to be I’d want you to at least be friends with us while you’re still with us, and then go off on your own to do whatever it is you want—”

            Armin took a breath; he gathered up all the coherence he could find. 

            “Eren.” He stopped. “Why would I  _plan_  to not be your friend? I’ve been trying to do what I need to. For all of us. But angling to not be friends and accepting that we might not always be aren’t the same—”

            “I  _don’t_  accept it!”

            Armin smiled; it came off a bit amorphous, but he couldn’t do better when his whole person seemed to be going blurry at the edges.

            “—and neither is acknowledging that it’s a risk,” he said. “I can’t mitigate it if I pretend it’s not there. I’ve been busy lately, but that’s always been a priority. I don’t want to go see the world by myself. It was always going to be with you. It still is. First I just need to make sure you’re okay.”

            “That doesn’t mean doing everything yourself! Fuck!” He squeezed Armin’s shoulders tighter.

            “Next time open with that, please. No more huge heroic sacrifices that’d throw me out of the story altogether.” His brow furrowed. If now was the time to be totally honest… “And don’t call me cold again.”

            “I don’t think you’re cold!”

            “But you said it.”

            “I—”

            “Eren, you did,” Mikasa said. She was standing in the kitchen doorway with her coat buttoned up and her scarf pulled up to protect her chin. “You even told me that.” Eren’s shoulders sloped downwards.

            “Alright. Yeah. I did.” He turned back to Armin. “I'm sorry. Won't happen again. So you try to relax, and I’ll try to not screw up what I say, and we’ll just—try to be happy now as well as later. Deal?” Armin nodded.  

            “I’m going back,” Mikasa said. “Grisha says to just make sure he’s warm. Call me if he gets any worse.” Armin could not help but imagine Mikasa sprinting casually to the hospital with him slung over her shoulder once again. She would probably get him there faster than an ambulance would. This produced an unasked-for image of Mikasa wearing a helmet with a red flashing light, elbowing people out of her way, wailing like a siren. Armin fell into another helpless fit of giggles. 

            Eren had no idea why it had happened, but it was the second time Armin had laughed that night, and both times Mikasa had been present. Better yet, if she was going she must have decided he could handle the situation himself. If Eren had beamed at her any more brightly, the words ‘THANK YOU’ would have been flashing across the wall in neon colours.

            “And Armin,” Mikasa said. He looked up expecting a rebuke. “Look after him. Trigonometry scares the hell out of him.” When she stepped back into the hall Armin wanted very much to tackle her and hug her—but another time, maybe, when his limbs weren’t so leaden. He’d need a good running start, or it would be like hitting a brick wall.

            “I think she’d make good defense too, you know,” he said. He heard the jingle of bells as Mikasa closed the door behind her—some decorative bit of metalwork his grandfather had hung on the front door’s window.

            “Defense? Like soccer?”, Eren asked.

            “Yeah. She’s really really…” He yawned. “Just… _there_ , and…the most important thing… I mean I think she’d be a wing still because the centre—the centre’s the balancing act and she’s more of a…striker, no matter where you put her, but I just…she’s always so good at being where she needs to be…”

            “The balancing act, eh?” Sensing that Armin would soon be asleep, Eren lifted the mug from his loose grip and set it above them on the table. “And here I always thought you were a natural centre. I guess you just cover really well.”

            Armin’s left eye narrowed.

            “Are you making fun of me?”

            “Yep. Why’re you talking like this, anyway? You thinking of joining the team again in the spring season? Reiner’d love to have you back, especially since Marco’ll be there again. We’d have our whole defensive line back together—we’d do so much better. You know Reiner calls you the ‘control tower’? And even for us on forward, it’s way more secure knowing you’re back there. I mean, I’d really like to have you back too. A lot.”

            There it was, finally, months after it would have been relevant. During the fall season Armin couldn't have been convinced to play again, of course, but hearing it was still better than inferring it. 

            As for now, Armin didn't even need convincing. 

            “I’ll have to take fewer shifts," he said. "Not tutor extra people. Or I think with all the practices I really will die.” Eren's head tilted forward again so hard they clunked foreheads and bounced back. Eren didn't even pause to register the pain. 

            “Yeah. But I swear, Armin, I’ll get whatever scholarships I need, so don’t worry about me. All you need to do is get whatever scholarships  _you_  can.”

            “And help you with trig.”

            “And help me with trig. Also bio and chem. I mean obviously I’m more than okay with you helping me—just not running yourself into the ground.”

            “Right. We are officially…” Armin reached up to get a grip on the table. “Officially agreed about that.” He pulled himself to his feet, sliding easily out of Eren’s arms. Falling asleep here was tempting, but would get him a sore neck and a shivering grandfather.

             "Wait," Eren said, catching his hand. "I said in my message—I know part of what I fucked up, before. So, Armin...what do you want?"

             Even tired as he was, a huge number of answers arose in Armin's mind.  _To get through university with you and Mikasa, in good academic standing; to survive the last few months before high school's over; to get some kind of useful interesting career; to be understood and appreciated, including by myself; to be asked questions like this more often..._ The list went on. 

             The one he meant to say was,  _To sleep_. It was to the point, and at the moment that made it beautiful to Armin's bloodshot eyes. What actually came out of his mouth was blunter still.  

             “Are you alright sleeping in my bed?”

             Eren didn't as much as blink. 

            “Absolutely.”

            Armin didn’t end up needing to be carried upstairs after all. He dragged himself to bed just fine, and if he hit the mattress harder than he’d intended, he successfully passed it off as enthusiasm for unconsciousness. Eren was rustling around somewhere, probably getting changed; when the mattress tilted down Armin said, “Light."

            “Oh yeah.” He disappeared for a moment, the light flicked off, and then Eren crawled in after Armin, who had successfully burrowed his way beneath the blankets. It took a while for Eren to get comfortable. Armin lay still while his friend shifted and squirmed and sorted out where exactly he fit. Eventually, Armin decided that Eren was taking too much care not to tangle their limbs and was really just preventing both of them from sleeping. Armin winched himself up on his arms, moved a few inches to his right, and dropped face-first onto Eren with all the grace and delicacy of a bag of bricks. “Oof. Alright, point made.”

            Armin hummed wordlessly into Eren’s shirt. _This is not Eren's shirt_. Armin's nose was pressed right against a streak of paint across the stomach that had never washed out. It had gotten there when Armin had been helping his grandfather repaint the living room. He gave another laugh, shorter this time, and then tilted his face up so that his chin rested on Eren’s chest. It was too dark for him to make out Eren’s expression—he could just get a sense of where his eyes were, and the sharp line of his nose—but Armin wouldn’t let his drooping eyelids meet just yet.

            “What?”, Eren asked. "Something wrong?" 

            “No. It's just that today kind of got wrecked.”

            “Yeah, well. Blizzards’ll do that, I guess.”

            “So, I mean, do you want to stay tomorrow night too?” 

            Eren's arms had still been bent perpendicular at the elbow while he sorted out where to put them; now they collapsed across Armin's back. 

            “Oh fuck...one of these days it's going to come out that you're telepathic and I'm not even going to blink. I don’t think it’ll take two full days to sort out trigonometry, though.”

            “I guess the telepathy's not two-way. I'm really not thinking about trigonometry.”

            The little huff of breath told Armin that Eren was smiling even though he couldn’t see it.

            “Okay. Thanks.”

            In case the message hadn't been clear enough, Eren tucked some of Armin’s hair behind his ear and leaned forward; he brushed his nose against Armin’s forehead. Armin’s eyes closed of their own accord, but he only let them stay that way for a moment. Armin’s resolution to let Eren settle on an approach lay forgotten somewhere—the cash register, the bus stop bench, the back seat of Jean’s car, the kitchen floor. There was something he wanted to do.

            Armin dug his fingers into the blankets and dragged himself forward. He was trying to press his lips to Eren’s nose, because he knew, he  _knew_  what it meant and what it had always meant. It had been the same right from the very first time when they’d been in kindergarten and Eren had found him crying on the schoolyard. Armin’s balance was a bit off, so he wound up squashing his mouth just below and to the right of his target. To remedy this he clutched Eren’s collar and pulled himself up that extra half an inch. He planted his kiss and then planted another, and another. As his muscles slackened and lowered him once more his lips found their clumsy, wandering way to Eren’s, which were chapped but soft and pliant and entirely unsurprised. They were everything Armin could have hoped; this was how he was used to things being, with Eren. Natural, if occasionally sloppy, and in a language they both understood. Armin was too exhausted to lift his head and see whether Eren had translated correctly, but as he nuzzled his face against the curve of Eren’s neck and Eren dropped his arms around Armin’s shoulders, as Eren’s breathing levelled out and Armin’s went with it, he got his confirmation. When Eren’s hand drifted automatically to smooth down Armin’s hair, Armin finally let himself rest.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm going to end this one here for right now. I'd like to write about the spring semester as well because there are a lot of things there I want to tackle (more Mikannie, the flower situation, how Eren and Armin react to recent developments, Armin actually playing soccer [the original basis for this fic which went neglected], what exactly Armin is going to end up going to school for, etc.). I know everything that has to happen; I just haven't written it yet. While I sort that out I might work on some other ideas I have going. 
> 
> Anyway, this was my first attempt at a reasonably lengthy work for any fandom. It was difficult, and honestly that makes me more likely to try again. Thank you so much for reading! I really do appreciate it.


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